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OUT OF THE MACHINE FELL AN OBJECT. 
“Betty Gordon at Ocean Park” 


Page 146 









Betty Gordon at 
Ocean Park 

OR 

Gay Days on the Boardwalk 

BY 

ALICE B. EMERSON 

AUTHOR OF “BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE *ARM,” “BETTY 
GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP,” “THE RUTH 
FIELDING SERIES,” ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 








looks for Stria 

By ALICE B. EMERSON 

l2mo. Cloth. Illustrated. 


BETTY GORDON SERIES 

BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM 
BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON 
BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL 
BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL 
BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP 
BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


RUTH FIELDING SERIES 

RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL 
RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL 
RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP 
RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT 
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH 
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND 
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM 
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES 
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES 
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE 
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS 
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT 
RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND 
RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST 
RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE 
RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING 

Cupples & Leon Co., Publishers, New York. 


Copyright, 1923, by 
Cupples & Leon Company 


Betty Gordon at Ocean Park 


JIJ/V 25 1323 ' ^ 

' / 

©C1A752530 


Printed in U. S. A. 












CONTENTS 


*5 

CN- 

Cs 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

I 

Something Always Happens ^ 

I 

II 

Sally Cutler . . , .. 

12 

III 

A Circus on His Hands . ... 

20 

IV 

The Tail of the Kite . l . ! 

28 

V 

Surprise and Expectation 

38 

VI 

Those Tucker Twins . ,. ... 

46 

VII 

An Odorous Gale . .. ... . 

_ 5 6 

VIII 

SX-43 .... ... ,. V 

64 

IX 

The Bungalow Canoe Club . 

72 

X 

The Dance at the Cam- 



PEACHIE . . . .. . .. 

81 

XI 

A Moment of Peril . . .. 

89 

XII 

The Feast of the Hobgoblins 

95 

XIII 

Not Fast Colors . . « 

107 

XIV 

Convincing Evidence .. M « 

114 

XV 

A Glorious Fourth ... ... 

122 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

XVI 

An Event of Moment ... ... 

132 

XVII 

What Fell From the Sea- 



Plane . . ... ... . 

139 

XVIII 

The Excitement Continues . 

147 

XIX 

A Complete Disappearance . 

154 

XX 

The Dancers . . 

l60 

XXI 

Boardwalk Diversions ... 

I69 

XXII 

Trailing Jasper Heddick ... ... 

17S 

XXIII 

At the Summit of Pike’s Peak 

186 

XXIV 

In the Cavern «. ... ... 

i 93 

XXV 

An End to All Things ... ... 

199 



BETTY GORDON 
AT OCEAN PARK 


CHAPTER I 

SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 

“But nothing ever happens on this road,” 
wailed Libbie. “We’ve tried it before and never 
saw even a rabbit or a chipmunk. We just have 
to climb, and climb.” 

“That tells the story,” laughed Bobby Littell, 
her cousin, tossing her curls. “It is the climb you 
object to. Really, Libbie, you are getting too 
fat to move.” 

“I’m not either,” cried the plump and dreamy- 
eyed Libbie. “It’s horrid of you to call me fat. 
I am just pleasingly plump.” 

“Oh! Oh!” rallied the curly-headed one; but 
before she could say more Betty Gordon, her 
closest chum, who did not often disagree with 
Bobby, intervened: 

“Don’t tease poor Libbie about her avoirdu¬ 
pois, Bobby. She cannot really help it, you 
know.” 

“Indeed?” scoffed Bobby, but laughing too. 


2 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“As long as she takes a box of caramels to bed 
with her she will continue to put on weight. Pos- 
i-tive-ly!” 

“These remarks upon poor Libbie’s all too 
fleshy figure have nothing to do with the possibil¬ 
ity of romance appearing on this road,” Louise, 
Bobby’s sister and the plump girl’s cousin, put in 
briskly. She was always the peacemaker. Al¬ 
though she was a year and a half younger than 
Bobby, she was so quiet and sensible that she 
seemed the elder. “But how can we tell, Libbie, 
what is waiting for us just around the corner?” 

“We-ell,” responded Libbie doubtfully, unable 
to make a better rejoinder, and the six girls 
marched on up the stony hillside road. 

Norma and Alice Guerin were of the party, 
and that for a very good reason. Betty and the 
Littell girls made their headquarters near Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., between school terms. The Guerin 
girls lived in another part of the country. It was 
now June, and vacation plans were rife among 
the roster of pupils at Shadyside, a boarding 
school which these girls attended. 

Betty Gordon, who dearly loved Norma and 
Alice, whom she had known even longer than she 
had the Littells, had decided to include the 
former in her plans for the summer vacation, now 
not far distant. 

“Uncle Dick writes that the lawyer has found 


SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 3 

a cottage at Ocean Park,” Betty said, continuing 
the topic that had previously held their united 
attention. “Bob is to run down next Saturday to 
see if the place is all right.” 

“Why!” demanded Bobby, “what does Bob 
Henderson know about selecting a house? I wish 
your uncle would let you and me go, Betty.” 

“Well, I guess Bob knows something too,” de¬ 
clared Betty loyally. “You know he’s got lots 
of sense, Bobby.” 

“M-mm.” 

“What does that mean?” demanded her chum, 
rather sharply. 

“It expresses some agreement with a modicum 
of doubt,” said Louise, and, thus having repeated 
a favorite observation of one of their teachers, 
smiles appeared on all the girls’ faces. 

That is, on all but that of the plump Libbie. 
She toiled on despairingly behind the others, mut¬ 
tering : 

“Nothing ever does happen on this road, I tell 
you.” 

“What nonsense!” cried Alice Guerin gaily. 
“You know very well, Libbie, that something is 
sure to happen when Betty Gordon leads the way. 
And there will be delightful happenings down 
there at Ocean Park. I can scarcely wait to slip 
the scholastic yoke for the summer,” mimicking 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


4 

the words of another of their instructors at 
Shadyside. 

“That doesn’t make any difference to this 
road,” grumbled Libbie. “And I’ve got a stone 
bruise.” 

Suddenly Betty, who was in advance with Bob¬ 
by, halted and held up her hand for silence. 

“What’s the matter?” demanded her chum, 
staring at her. “Why stand here like a traffic 
officer, Betty?” 

“Listen!” commanded Betty Gordon. 

Just ahead of the girls was a sharp and wooded 
turn in the road. From beyond that turn a sound 
had first reached her ears. Now the others 
heard it. 

“You notice, Libbie, that something is about to 
happen,” laughed Louise. “Wait.” 

Libbie promptly sat down on a bowlder. 
“Wait” could mean but one thing to her—“rest.” 
The sound they heard was the sputtering roar of 
a balky motor. It stopped abruptly. Then two 
angry voices broke into argument. 

“Something really has happened,” agreed 
Norma Guerin. 

“It is an auto breakdown,” announced Bobby, 
with more confidence. “As you are the past-mis¬ 
tress of the art of coaxing a balky motor engine 
to life and duty, Norma Guerin-” 


SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 5 

“Let us see who is in trouble, first,” said Betty, 
with some caution. 

She led the way, and the six girls rounded the 
turn in the road, chattering and curious, Libbie 
reluctantly bringing up the rear. A big tour¬ 
ing car was stalled in the middle of the narrow 
road. No other conveyance could have got by 
on the one side or the other. 

Two young men had their heads under the 
hood. They were both coatless and their bared 
arms were smutched with oil. They had flung 
their hats and coats into the tonneau of the car, 
and to Betty’s mind they did not seem suitably 
dressed in any case for a long automobile trip. 
Yet the car showed evidences of much travel. 

One of the young fellows jerked his head away 
from the motor and stared around at the sextette 
of Shadyside pupils. For an instant he looked 
startled—Betty thought he seemed frightened. 
Though why he should be afraid of a group of 
girls it would be hard to say. They were scarcely 
of frightful aspect. 

This fellow was a man in his early twenties. 
He had a lean, deeply lined face which was un¬ 
naturally hard of expression. A mean grin de¬ 
veloped on his features, he shrugged his shoulders, 
and then attracted the attention of his mate with 
a nudge of his elbow. 


6 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“I say, Jasp, look what’s blown in. You 
couldn’t have shut the door tight.” 

Betty flushed at these words, and even Louise 
Littell looked annoyed. Norma, who might have 
briskly gone forward to offer her expert services, 
came promptly to a standstill. 

“Heh?” ejaculated the second man, who, when 
he stood up and looked around, likewise displayed 
an unpleasant, if youthful, visage. 

“You’ll know us, girls, if you see us again, I 
reckon,” growled this second fellow. “But I sup¬ 
pose we should be proud to have your company,” 
and he made a sweeping and scornful bow. 

“Never mind ’em,” said the first speaker, going 
back to his work. “Get busy. Want to be nailed 
here?” 

“There’s something coming down the hill 
now,” the man, Jasp, said. “If it’s that girl with 
her freak pony-” 

“Don’t waste time.” 

“Just the same,” the girls heard Jasp mutter, 
“she saw us when we passed, just as sure as you 
are a foot high.” 

“Drop it, Jasp!” exclaimed the other. “Want 
to tell all you know? Little pitchers have big 
ears.” 

But he stood out from the car again to listen, 
and was undoubtedly made more anxious by the 
rattling noise he heard. Betty and her compan- 



SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 


7 

ions heard the sound as well. They stared at 
each other with suspicion. The thought took root 
in their minds that there was something very 
wrong with these two young men as well as with 
their car. 

“Do you suppose it is stolen?” whispered Bob¬ 
by in Betty’s ear. 

“Sh!” rejoined the other warningly. 

“Humph!” ejaculated the rebellious Bobby. 
“I’m no small child, I’d have them know. Fancy 
his calling us ‘little pitchers.’ ” 

The rattling of wheels grew louder, although 
the vehicle approaching was not in sight. The 
road wound up among the clumps of trees and 
bowlders were scattered over the hillside in such 
a crooked way that people approaching each other 
on it met unexpectedly. The road’s twists and 
turns, as well as its steepness, were good reasons 
for Tibbie’s expressed objection to hiking this 
way. 

The two young men fussing with the car were 
evidently in haste to get away. The glances they 
shot now and then at the girls from Shadyside 
were almost threatening. Betty felt that their 
departure would possibly relieve the tension, so 
she said: 

“Well, Norma, you cannot doctor this car, I 
guess. Let’s go on.” 

The two fellows glanced after them, but said 


8 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


nothing more within the hearing of the sextette. 
But the latter were glad to get out of sight of 
the stalled car. 

“They are two awful men!” Alice Guerin de¬ 
clared. 

“What did I tell you?” complained Libbie. 
“This road-” 

“Dear me!” Bobbie broke in with laughter, 
“I am sure we struck something out of the or¬ 
dinary. They might be automobile bandits from 
their looks.” 

“Hush!” warned Betty. “Here comes that 
wagon, or whatever it is.” 

At the moment the automobile engine behind 
them broke into a roar. The noise continued, 
became more subdued as the driver manipulated 
the mechanism, and then the girls heard the car 
start on down the hill. It went with an angry 
spurt of speed and, in a few moments, the noisy 
throbbing of the engine mellowed in the distance. 

“Well,” remarked Bobby, “they went without 
biting us.” 

Alice Guerin suddenly uttered a wondering cry. 
Unlike the others she had been looking forward 
instead of back. 

“Dear me, Betty Gordon!” she cried, “you’ve 
been out West and all. Is this what they call a 
pinto pony?” 



SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 


9 

“Where’s a pinto pony?” demanded Betty, 
whirling about to look up the road. 

She joined the other girls in an exclamation of 
surprise, if not of alarm. The strangest vehicle, 
drawn by the strangest looking animal, driven by 
the strangest looking girl they had ever seen, had 
just come into view. The animal was small and 
very gracefully built and trotted perfectly over 
the stony road. It was mainly of a yellow-brown 
color striped with black about barrel, legs, neck 
and even across its face. Altogether it was a 
most curious looking driving animal. 

“Somebody’s painted the poor horse,” cried 
Louise. “What a pity.” 

“Goodness I” exclaimed her sister Bobby, 
“don’t you see what that is? It’s not a horse at 
all.” 

“Elucidate, Miss Know-it-all!” exclaimed the 
still puzzled Louise. 

The creature looked more like a donkey than 
it did like a horse, for it had very little mane and 
only a paint-brush tail. It wore a heavy muzzle. 

“Why, girls, it’s a zebra!” cried Bobby. 

“Right out of a circus,” murmured Libbie. 
“Oh, my!” 

“I should say that girl driving is out of a cir¬ 
cus, too,” drawled Bobby. 

“What a strange looking outfit,” murmured 
Betty Gordon, staring as hard as any of the 


io BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

others at the approaching girl and her strange 
driving pony. 

She was a lanky girl in an ugly brown and 
white checked gingham dress of an atrocious cut 
and fit, if it could be said to fit at all, and wearing 
a faded sunbonnet stiffened all about, it was evi¬ 
dent, with narrow shingles, like a Shaker’s bon¬ 
net. Her feet were bare. 

She sat in the narrow seat of what looked like 
a sulky, save that it must have been “home 
made.” There were no pneumatic tires, no 
springs, and every spoke and joint in the entire 
vehicle rattled as though the sulky was about to 
fall apart. That was why the noise of the girl’s 
approach had been heard so far in advance of 
her appearance. 

She was a girl of perhaps fifteen, but very 
strong. She braced her bare feet against the bar 
behind the zebra’s hindquarters and held to the 
reins with the muscles of her wrists and forearms 
swelling plainly under the brown skin. The 
strange animal was evidently hard-bitted, if it 
was well trained. 

When it saw the six girls standing beside the 
road the zebra gave every evidence of being skit¬ 
tish. It shied over toward the other ditch, dan¬ 
cing and otherwise acting in threatening style. 
The girl grabbed a slender willow branch from the 


SOMETHING ALWAYS HAPPENS 


II 


socket beside her and cut him smartly along the 
flank. 

But she was so fully taken up with the zebra’s 
actions that she did not observe what lay before 
her. The animal had danced too far off the road. 
When it darted forward again under the sting 
of the lash to get past the group of schoolgirls, 
the off wheel of the sulky smashed with terrific 
impact against a bowlder that here cropped out 
of the ditch’s bank. 

The sulky stopped as though it had collided 
with the most immovable object in the world. 
And the zebra stopped, too, thrown back upon its 
haunches. The harness was strong; but the wheel 
was not. It collapsed like a falling house of 
blocks, and the lanky girl in the sunbonnet and 
gingham dress was shot over the zebra’s head 
and came down sprawling into the roadway al¬ 
most at the feet of the girls from Shadyside 
School. 


CHAPTER II 


SALLY CUTLER 

Following the accident, Betty Gordon was the 
first of the startled and surprised spectators to 
move. She was not quick enough to break the 
fall of the long-legged driver of the strange turn¬ 
out, but she was in season to grab the bit of the 
zebra before it could break away with the shat¬ 
tered sulky and escape. 

Betty was more used to horses than any other 
girl of her party, if she was not used to such a 
strange driving animal as this attached to the 
sulky. And as the zebra was muzzled she did 
not mind—not very much, at least—if it did snap 
at her. Let it dance and quiver and snort all it 
wanted to, Betty hung on. 

That was quite in keeping with the girl’s char¬ 
acter. Impulsive she was, and rather daring and 
reckless, but her determination and her ability to 
carry through a thing once it was begun, tempered 
that natural impatience and impulsiveness. Her 
character was more rounded than that of most 


12 


SALLY CUTLER 


13 

girls of her age, and she won the confidence of 
older people because of such attributes. 

And she needs have good sense and a poise 
above that of most girls of thirteen or fourteen. 
Betty Gordon had lived in so many places and 
had adventured into such strange conditions that 
her character had developed in accord with the 
practical demands made upon it. 

She had been left an orphan more than two 
years before this story opens and left to the care 
and upbringing of a bachelor uncle whom she had 
never seen. But when she did see and get ac¬ 
quainted with Mr. Richard Gordon the girl was 
sure that such another uncle never could have 
come into the life of a lonely, eager, and imag¬ 
inative girl. 

Mr. Gordon’s business affairs made it impos¬ 
sible for him to take Betty with him wherever he 
went. He was a promoter of oil and mining 
properties and he traveled a good deal in out- 
of-the-way places. He did not at first see how 
he could take his niece with him at all. 

So he found her what he believed would be a 
healthful and happy home in the country, and in 
the first volume of the series, entitled “Betty Gor¬ 
don at Bramble Farm,” the girl really began to 
learn to take care of herself and to endure not a 
few trials and temptations. Her surroundings 
were unpleasant at the farm; but she met there 


I 4 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

Bob Henderson, likewise an orphan, who had 
proved since that meeting to be the most faithful 
boy chum and cavalier that a girl could possess. 
While at Bramble Farm, too, Betty became ac¬ 
quainted with the Guerin sisters. But her subse¬ 
quent adventures for some time separated Betty 
from the Guerins and everybody else she had 
known in the neighborhood of the farm, save Bob. 

Betty actually had to run away from Bramble 
Farm, and for a different, but quite as good, rea¬ 
son, Bob ran away too. In “Betty Gordon in 
Washington,” the second book of the series, the 
two friends met again in the United States cap¬ 
ital, and there Betty was befriended by the Littell 
family, and later went with Roberta and Louise 
Littell to Shadyside School. There also went 
Alice and Norma Guerin and the Littell girls’ 
Vermont cousin, Elizabeth, or Libbie Littell. 

Before these schooldays, however, and a year 
before the present summer, Uncle Dick found 
himself so situated in Oklahoma that he could 
have Betty with him for a time. Betty started 
for the West, and with her went Bob Henderson 
bound on a private mission. In “Betty Gordon 
in the Land of Oil” Bob found his relatives and 
aided them to secure a fortune by selling their 
land to oil speculators. Betty had some wonder¬ 
ful adventures in and around Flame City, and 
toward fall they all returned East, Betty and Bob 


SALLY CUTLER ^ 

to enter school and Mr. Gordon to travel in Can¬ 
ada on important business. 

Betty joined her girl friends from Washing¬ 
ton and Bob joined the boys he had met at Fair- 
fields, the Littells’ beautiful Virginia home. The 
girls went to Shadyside School and the boys en¬ 
tered the Salsette Military Academy, directly 
across a beautiful lake from Shadyside. “Betty 
Gordon at Boarding School,” the fourth volume, 
relates the fine times the young people enjoyed 
in and about these institutions of learning. 

At Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Littell opened 
their home on the Potomac to their daughters and 
their school friends, and Fairfields became the 
scene of delightful activities—parties, horseback 
rides, motor trips, and innumerable pleasant out¬ 
ings. But to Betty’s mind the most enjoyable 
thing of all was having her Uncle Dick with her 
for some time, for he came from Canada for the 
holidays. Mr. Gordon had promised to visit 
an old friend at Mountain Camp, and Betty 
longed to accompany him to the Adirondacks. 
But school was scheduled to open very soon after 
New Year’s, and as Roberta Littell, who was 
always addressed as “Bobby,” even by her good- 
natured parents who had no boy in the family, 
said: “School has the first call.” 

One never can tell what is going to happen next 
in this world, however. Something did happen 


16 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

that made it possible for Betty and her friends to 
spend nearly a fortnight at Mr. Jonathan Can¬ 
ary’s lodge in the snow-bound wilderness, and the 
adventures of the party as recorded in “‘Betty 
Gordon at Mountain Camp” were thrilling. Bet¬ 
ty made new friends in this last volume of the 
series, as always; the most important among them 
being the three Bellethornes. 

The happy and exciting time at Mountain 
Camp had come to an end all too soon. The 
young folks were recalled to Shadyside and Sal- 
sette. The months that had elapsed since the 
opening of both schools had been busy and in¬ 
teresting ones for Betty Gordon and all her 
friends. And now the closing of school for the 
summer was but a fortnight off. 

This was one Saturday afternoon when the six 
girls had started off for a long hike without being 
escorted by any of their boy friends from the mil¬ 
itary academy across the lake. Perhaps Libbie 
had objected to this road up the mountain be¬ 
cause she knew they would meet none of the Sal- 
sette youths in this direction. Libbie was a ro¬ 
mantic girl. She had her own choice among the 
Salsette boys—Timothy Derby. He wore shell- 
rimmed spectacles and read poetry with her. 

“Don’t—ever—say—again, Libbie, that— 
nothing will happen!” panted her cousin Bobby, 
who had run almost as quickly as her chum, Bet- 


SALLY CUTLER 


1 7 

ty, to the rescue. Only Bobby was bent on res¬ 
cuing the sprawling girl who had shot over the 
zebra’s head and was now almost under his feet. 
“Get up! Hurry! Suppose that creature kicks 
you!” Bobby added gaspingly. 

“He’d better not!” declared the strange girl in 
a loud but not unpleasant voice. “I’d lay into 
him with a goad if he did. And he knows it, the 
rascal. Ben Ali ain’t half as crazy as he acts.” 

“Ben Ali?” 

“That zebry. Oh, yes, that’s his name. Stand 
still, you botheration!” she added, moving nearer 
to take the bridle from Betty’s hand. 

Betty gave it up willingly, for although she had 
learned something about horses she was not alto¬ 
gether sure that a zebra was even as trustworthy 
as a wild Western pony. 

“That wheel is smashed all to smithereens, 
ain’t it?” observed the strange girl. “Well, them 
fellers will get away now, for sure. Did you 
see ’em?” 

“Who?” asked Libbie, wide-eyed. 

“You mean the two young men in the automo¬ 
bile?” asked Betty quickly. 

“Yes. Them’s them. Smarties! They tried 
to cash a bad check at my pop’s hay and grain 
store in Stoneville. But he didn’t bite. Si Cutler 
ain’t as dumb as city folks think him. No, sir- 
reel” 


l8 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

The girls from Shadyside were as much amused 
by the way the girl spoke as by her odd appear¬ 
ance. 

“Them fellers got that car off’n my uncle. 
Uncle Phin ain’t so smart as pop. When they 
went by the house just now I saw the car and I 
knew it. I harnessed Ben Ali-” 

“This?” interposed Bobby again. 

“The zebry. I harnessed him and put out af¬ 
ter them. And if he wasn’t the meanest thing 
that ever trotted on four hoofs I wouldn’t have 
broke down here. But here I am, and that’s all 
there is to it.” 

“Oh, not all!” cried Betty, her eyes suddenly 
dancing. “You must tell us something more, 
Miss—Miss Cutler.” 

“Sally is my name. Sally Cutler. And Silas 
Cutler is my father. Hay and grain store, and 
a liv’ry stable, and into anything else he can 
turn a penny at. At Stoneville, over the moun¬ 
tain.” 

“Thank you, Sally,” said Betty more quietly. 
“My name is Betty Gordon, and these girls with 
me—well, they are all named Littell or Guerin. 
You will have to learn which is which gradualfy. 
But you can tell us something we all want to 
know right now. How did you come to be driving 
such a creature as this zebra?” 

“Ben Ali?” 



SALLY CUTLER 


tg 

“Yes,” Betty said. “It seems to me the 
strangest thing-” 

“Nothing strange about it,” interrupted Sally 
Cutler promptly. “Pop had to take most of 
Hannigan’s Famous Caravan for a feed bill, and 
we’ve got to make what use we can of it. This 
zebry did a trick act in the ring. He’s as old as 
the hills, they say, and pretty tame—for a zebry. 
So I drive him. And he don’t eat hardly a thing. 
But the elephant! Goodness me I If pop had 
kept the elephant, in two months he would have 
been a bankrupt, no two ways about it I” 



CHAPTER III 


A CIRCUS ON HIS HANDS 

“DeAr me!” breathed Louise, who was noth¬ 
ing if not practical. “Is she sort of crazy, do 
you suppose? Fancy having a circus on one’s 
hands!” She said this so low that Sally Cutler 
could not possibly have heard. 

Libbie, who stood next to Louise, was inter¬ 
ested. 

“My!” she said aloud. “How interesting! 
Just think of all those circus performers in tights 
and tinsel being in one’s—er-” 

“Livery stable or feed store, Libbie?” de¬ 
manded Bobby, bursting into a laugh. Then to 
Sally, she added: “I guess your father had his 
hands full.” 

“You’d think so if you saw the fat lady,” re¬ 
turned Sally gloomily enough. “She’s broken 
down our best sofa sitting on it. And she’s al¬ 
ways sitting. Never walks a step if she can help 
it. She’s not as bad as the elephant was-” 

“Goodness’ sake!” gasped Betty Gordon. 

20 




A CIRCUS ON HIS HANDS 


21 


“My head is ringing! Do I hear the same things 
you other girls hear? Do tell me the truth, Sally 
Cutler—did the elephant actually sit on the 
sofa?” 

“No, you goosey,” replied the country girl, 
with scorn. “I meant about her eating. The 
doctor’s put her on a diet—the fat lady, I mean. 
But he wasn’t ever on a diet in his life—the ele¬ 
phant, that is. Pop got rid of him in a hurry. 
But the living skeleton eats ’most as much. He 
ain’t on a diet.” 

“I know I am going to be silly before this is 
over,” declared Betty, laughing. “I can’t follow 
you at all. The fat lady—the elephant—the liv¬ 
ing skeleton— What a conglomeration! Are they 
all at your house?” 

“Not the elephant, I tell you. Or pop would 
have gone broke. He says so himself. But the 
rest of ’em—goodness! What could you do? 
There was the fat lady and the skeleton, and the 
bearded lady and the tattooed boy. That’s her 
son. 

“Who’s son?” queried Betty, trying to get it 
all straight in her mind. 

“The bearded lady’s. He’s a nice boy if he is 
all marked up. You don’t see it when he’s got 
his clothes on. I like that boy. And he helps 
do the chores. The bearded lady cooks some, 
too. But the fat lady and the skeleton just sit 


22 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

an the sofa—when it ain’t broke—like a king and 
queen on their throne, sort of. They’ve never 
done anything but that, you see. You see, just 
being fat and awfully skinny is an awfully wear¬ 
ing job. They have to keep their minds on it all 
the time. 

“Dear me!” murmured Betty again, while the 
other girls did not know whether to sympathize 
with Sally Cutler or burst into hilarious laughter. 

“Yes, the fat lady’s on a diet. Otherwise pop 
would have had to let her go to the highest bid¬ 
der same as he did the elephant. But I don’t 
know as he makes much by her only eating apples 
and a sort of a dry mash that comes in a package 
like chicken feed. You see, she is hungry all the 
time, poor soul; and she says it helps her to see 
other folks eat. That living skeleton, he tries to 
comfort her by eating enough for twins. I never! 
You’d think to look at him that if he swallowed 
a pea you could trace it all the way down to his 
waist, he’s so mortal thin. But as much as he 
eats—and it’s a plenty!—you’d never know from 
the look of him that it had any effect. But it all 
adds to the bill, and pop’s beginning to get good 
and worried.” 

Betty drew a long sigh and the other girls 
moved restlessly. Their leader begged: 

“Do explain, Sally. We’re awfully interested. 
How did your father come by this circus?” 


A CIRCUS ON HIS HANDS 


23 


“Hay and grain bill.” 

“Oh! The circus didn’t pay its bills?” 

“Hannigan’s Famous Caravan, it was called. 
They had bad weather. Lots of these mud shows 
do. Mud shows is what they call the circuses that 
travel about on wheels instead of going by rail¬ 
road; the little ones. It wasn’t a bad show, 
either, when it started out two months ago. The 
tattooed boy told me all about it. He’s traveled 
with circuses all his life, he and his mother. In 
the winter they live with his grandfather on a 
farm up in Maine. I don’t believe he likes the 
circus as much as he did. Humph! 

“Well, Hannigan owed my pop a bill from 
last year, and then he got a lot of stuff this spring 
on the promise that he’d pay both bills at once. 
But the lithograph people clamped a lien on him 
and scraped the till clean as soon as he had a good 
week or two on the road. Then the bad weather 
came and they struck Brackenbury—that’s only 
ten miles from Stoneville.” 

“And there it broke down?” asked Betty. 

“Went broke. Complete. Why, the poor old 
lion hadn’t been fed for so long that it broke 
down and cried when it saw a round steak. And 
the tiger yowled just like our old cat waiting for 
milk at the barn door. Poor things!” said Sally 
reflectively. 


24 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“It must have been a sorrowful sight/* giggled 
Bobby. 

“You’d say so. At the last show they gave, 
Bolivar, the elephant, was so busy begging for 
peanuts around the edge of the ring that he 
couldn’t be made to do his trick properly. And, 
you know, beside an elephant a peanut is awful 
small!” 

This was finally too much for the listeners. 
Whether they angered Sally or not, they burst 
into uproarious laughter. After a moment the 
country girl grinned, too, showing her fine white 
teeth. 

“Does sound funny, doesn’t it?” she observed, 
quite composed. “Well, that’s how it was. Han- 
nigan ran away. He didn’t have anything to run 
away from but debts. The others got away the 
best they could—all but the fat lady, the bearded 
lady, the skeleton and that boy. He’s nice,” Sally 
repeated reflectively. 

“Well, pop took what he could make use of. 
Bolivar ate two bales of hay and more’n a bale 
of rye straw the first twenty-four hours. Then 
pop chained him in the middle of our back lot, 
expecting he’d burst and not wanting the stable 
wrecked. But he didn’t do anything but weave 
himself to and fro on his big feet like he was 
knitting a pair of wool socks. Pop telegraphed 
all round the country to other circuses and finally 


A CIRCUS ON HIS HANDS 


25 

one circus wanted him—and paid for what Boli¬ 
var had eaten to get him. So pop was rid of 
him.” 

“And you and your father took the freak folks 
in because they had nowhere to go?” 

“They put ’em out of the hotel, and we found 
’em sitting on the roadside with their baggage, in 
the rain. You see, Hannigan hadn’t paid them a 
cent. And it had all come so sudden that they 
didn’t know which way to turn. And, believe me, 
that fat lady don’t turn often! She’s perfectly 
satisfied to sit still and let somebody else do the 
worrying.” 

“And is your father going to look after them?” 
asked Betty. “He must be a kind man.” 

“Well, he’s considered pretty sharp at a bar¬ 
gain,” said Sally Cutler, with evident pride in the 
absent Silas. “He is keepin’ ’em, yes. But he 
proposes to get his money back—and maybe a 
profit. He’s got ’em all signed to a contract, 
even the tattooed boy, and he’s dickering now 
with a man that’s got a dog show and maybe they 
will get a concession at some shore place and 
show ’em all there for the season, if they can get 
a good ballyhoo so late in the summer. I’ll be 
ticket seller, and I’ve picked out just the dress I 
want to wear. It’s in the window of the Bon 
Ton Emporium at Blackenbury.” 

“I’m sure,” said Betty, able to control her 


-26 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


laughter now, “that I hope your father will be 
successful and that the living skeleton will not eat 
you out of house and home.” 

“Between you and me,” said Miss Cutler, “se¬ 
cretly, I think he’s just showing off so as to please 
the fat lady. He’s hurting himself, like enough, 
with all the food he devours. He’s just as sweet 
on her as he can be.” 

“Oh!” gasped Libbie. “In love with the fat 
lady?” 

“That’s what he is,” said Sally, nodding vig¬ 
orously. 

“There must be plenty of her to love,” ob¬ 
served Bobby, with some disdain. 

But Libbie clasped her hands and looked 
dreamy, as she murmured: 

“Only think of it! It’s wonderful!” 

They stared at her in unusual amazement. At 
least Sally Cutler did not understand the romantic 
girl’s meaning. She said abruptly, and in her 
usual loud and pleasant voice: 

“Well, this won’t get me home, nor catch the 
auto thieves. I ought to have telephoned the con¬ 
stable, I suppose. And those men are well on 
their way, now, to wherever they are going. Did 
you girls notice the number of the car?” 

“It was number seven-ten-two-hundred-six, I 
think,” Betty replied promptly. 

“Yes. That’s Uncle Phineas’ car. Dear me, 


A CIRCUS ON HIS HANDS 27 

he will be unhappy. But I did the only thing I 
could think of doing at the time—chased ’em 
with Ben Ali.” She looked at the zebra again 
with some exasperation. “And this botheration 
managed to bust us all up. M-mm! I don’t 
know what I’m going to do with that wheel. I’ll 
have to lead Ben Ali all the way home anyway— 
and he leads about as easy as a twelve-wheel loco¬ 
motive. No ox was ever as stubborn as a zebry.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE TAIL OF THE KITE 

Here, Bobby said, Betty Gordon came for¬ 
ward in the character of Miss Fixit. She could 
not bear to see the interesting Sally Cutler left 
here on the hillside in despair with her strange 
steed and the broken-down sulky. 

“Of course the wheel can’t be fixed, so it will 
travel again—not until it has been to the wheel¬ 
wright’s,” she said pleasantly and cheerfully. 
“But I know something can be done with a fence 
rail.” 

“What, for pity’s sake?” cried Bobby. 

“You hold the zebra’s head, Sally. Or maybe 
you had better take him out of the shafts. We 
don’t want to be kicked.” 

“I’ll stand here and he won’t dare kick,” said 
the country girl promptly. “He’s so little. I 
often think it was lucky pop didn’t take the camel 
off that circus. I never could have driven it.” 

Bobby began to giggle again at this naive state¬ 
ment; but she managed to help her chum in the 

28 


THE TAIL OF THE KITE 


2 9 

task she had undertaken. The Guerin girls 
helped too. They were, practically, country girls 
and as Betty said, “were handy.” 

First of all they turned the zebra and sulky 
around, and headed it uphill, and then they raised 
the end of the sulky’s axle and blocked it up with 
some flat stones. The wheel was quite wrecked, 
and all they could do with that was to put the 
pieces into the bottom of the sulky under the nar¬ 
row seat. 

“Come on, Bobby!” commanded Betty Gor¬ 
don. “Help me pull a rail off the fence. I see 
you’ve got a long hitching rope, Sally. We’ll 
need that.” 

With some difficulty they got the cedar fence 
rail. Betty stuck one end under the axle and 
rested it firmly upon the cross-bar of the sulky 
behind the zebra’s twitching hindquarters. The 
rail was lashed to the axle, its other end was left 
to drag behind upon the ground, of course. 

“Start him up,” commanded Betty, when this 
was done to her satisfaction. 

The zebra dragged the sulky in a hobbling 
fashion. Bobby said the vehicle was now half a 
wagon and half a sled. But the rattling and 
scraping was no worse than the rattling of the 
wheels had been before. The zebra did not seem 
to mind it. 

“That’s famous 1” cried Sally. “You hold his 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


30 

head, Miss Betty Gordon, and I’ll hop in. You 
are real nice girls. If you ever get over the 
mountain to Stoneville, stop and see me. I live 
right next to pop’s feed and hay store. You 
can’t miss it. Silas Cutler is his name. I guess 
all you girls go to that big school at Shadyside?” 

“Yes, we do,” said Betty. “And we’ll be glad 
to see you again, Sally.” 

“I hope the living skeleton won’t eat you out 
of house and home,” giggled Bobby. 

“He’ll earn his keep all right if pop manages 
to make a dicker with that dog-show man and 
they get a good stand for the show for all sum¬ 
mer. I don’t mind having them all there—not 
even the skeleton. And that tattooed boy is real 
nice. Good-by!” 

She flourished the willow whip again and the 
zebra started up the hill dragging the bobbing, 
broken sulky at a fast pace. They were out of 
sight in a minute. 

“Well, that’s that,” said Bobby briskly. “Now 
what?” 

“Oh, let’s not climb any farther on this road,” 
complained Libbie from her seat on a rock. 
“There’s never anything to see on this road. 
And-” 

“Well, for pity’s sake, Libbie!” ejaculated 
Bobby. “Do you dare begin that song after what 
has just happened? Motor-car thieves! and a 



THE TAIL OF THE KITE 


3 r 

trotting zebra! and hearing all about a man with 
a circus on his hands! What would satisfy you?” 

“Going back to supper,” the plump girl re¬ 
turned promptly. “I’ve a stone bruise on my 
foot, and I’m hungry,” and she said it rather 
sullenly. 

“It’s lucky Mr. Cutler hasn’t you on his hands, 
too, Libbie dear,” laughed Alice Guerin. “But 
perhaps we have gone far enough for this after¬ 
noon. What do you say, Betty?” 

“I don’t believe we shall meet any adventure 
half so interesting as the motor-thieves and Sally 
Cutler,” responded Betty, dimpling. “So I am 
willing, like Libbie, to start back.” 

The plump girl got up gladly. “If we walk 
briskly,” she said, “we can catch a car and go to 
town and have some of that dee-lic-ious mara¬ 
schino cherry ice-cream at Gorgan’s. Then we’ll 
have time to get to Shadyside before the supper 
call.” 

“I knew she had some scheme in her head,” 
cried Louise emphatically. “Timothy Derby and 
his crowd are always in Gorgan’s on Saturday 
afternoon.” 

“They gorge at Gorgan’s, do they?” laughed 
Bobby. 

But Betty came to Libbie’s rescue. 

“That’s all right, then,” she cried. “I’m game. 
•I want to see Bob, anyway; and he’ll be there 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


32 

with the Tucker twins and Winifred Marion 
Brown if Timothy is on hand. They don’t let 
Timothy moon about by himself,” she added, 
rather wickedly looking at Libbie, “for they don’t 
know what may happen to him. They promised 
Mr. Derby, you know.” 

But Libbie only turned up her nose in scorn at 
this. She was quite used to having her choice 
among the boys made good-natured fun of. 

They mended their pace, and it was down hill, 
anyway, so easier to walk fast—at least Libbie 
said so. 

“Weight and gravitation count for much, Miss 
Anderson says,” observed Bobby, grinning. 

They arrived at the trolley line very quickly. 
Of course they saw nothing of the stolen automo¬ 
bile on their way to town, but Betty looked 
sharply at the tail-number of each touring car 
that passed them or that their car passed. 

“For they might abandon it, you know,” she 
explained to her chum. “I really would like to 
help those Cutler people. They are kind-hearted 
—you can see that.” 

“Do you remember the number, Betty?” asked 
Bobby. 

“I think so. Seven hundred and ten thousand 
two hundred and six—seven, one, naught, two, 
naught, six.” 


THE TAIL OF THE KITE 


33 

“Dear me, you have such a head, Bettykins,” 
said Bobby, admiringly. 

“And I’ve such a stone bruise on my foot,” 
groaned Libbie. “I like Miss Anderson, but I 
wish she hadn’t advised me to take these hikes. 
I don’t believe any amount of walking will keep 
me slim.” 

“Keep you slim!” gasped Bobby. “Make you 
slim, you mean. And it won’t do you the least bit 
of good, for you lay in enough provender after 
each hike to make up—and more—for the wear 
and tear on tissue. You had better go on a diet 
like Sally Cutler’s fat lady.” 

But Libbie was not offended. Nor was she 
advised. As soon as they reached the confec¬ 
tioner’s she marched in at the head of the crowd 
and without delay ordered a double portion of her 
favorite ice-cream. The little business section 
surrounding the Shadyside railway station was a 
lively place on Saturday afternoon. It was not 
“out of bounds” for either the girls’ school or 
the military academy, and the young folks from 
both institutions were apt to meet here more 
freely than when under the chaperonage of their 
instructors. 

They had fun shopping in the little stores and 
treating each other at Gorgan’s and at the drug¬ 
store soda fountain. While the six girls of Bet¬ 
ty’s crowd were busy at their table half a dozen 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


34 

boys not far from the girls’ ages burst in through 
the screen doors and hailed them vociferously. 

Bob Henderson picked Betty up, chair and all, 
just to show off his muscle. But she did not 
mind. She had a wonderful opinion of both 
Bob’s physical and mental attributes. 

“Oh, Bob, did you hear from Uncle Dick?” 

“I got a note and expense money and directions 
from his lawyer,” responded her friend and co¬ 
ward of Mr. Richard Gordon. 

“How nice!” 

“I’m going down to Ocean Park to look over 
Marigold Villa a week from to-day. But the 
lawyer’s clerk says he is sure it is all right. Isn’t 
much time to make changes now, anyway. It is 
getting late in the rental season.” 

“But be sure you see that there are enough 
bedrooms and beds, Bob,” said the girl, with 
clasped hands and an ecstatic expression on her 
face. “Won’t we have a glorious time?” 

“I’ll say we will,” agreed Bob Henderson. 

The Tucker twins—Tommy and Ted—Tim¬ 
othy Derby, W. M. Brown and Gilbert Lane, all 
knew about the proposed outing at Ocean Park, 
and their parents had already given them permis¬ 
sion to join Betty’s party. The twelve young 
people began to jabber about it until the waitress 
could scarcely get or remember their several or¬ 
ders. Even the bespectacled Timothy was vol- 


THE TAIL OF THE KITE 35 

uble for once, as he sat as close as he could get 
to Libbie Littell. 

“Aren’t they spoony?” scoffed Bob in an under¬ 
tone to Betty. 

“Never mind. Libbie has been through some¬ 
thing this afternoon. We all have, in fact,” and 
Betty proceeded with great gaiety to tell Bob 
about the automobile thieves and Sally Cutler 
with her driving zebra. 

“Of all the adventures you get into, Betsey!” 
ejaculated Bob. “But those fellows ought to be 
looked after. I’ll tell Gil Lane on the q. t. He’s 
got a car in the garage here, you know. What 
was that number, did you say?” 

Betty was repeating it when Louise got up 
from the table. Louise always remembered! 

“We’ve got just time to get back in the bus for 
the supper call,” she said. “Don’t linger, 
Libbie.” 

They had all paid their score and Betty and 
Bob were at the head of the crowd as they went 
out of the store. Half a block away was the 
Shadyside Garage. Suddenly Betty clutched 
Bob’s arm and pointed with her other hand to¬ 
ward a touring car that was just leaving the front 
of the garage. 

“See there!” she gasped. 

“I see. What of it?” demanded Bob wonder- 
ingly. 


36 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“The number! The tail-board! Don’t you 
see, Bob?” cried Betty. 

“Seven hundred and ten thousand, two hun¬ 
dred and six,” muttered the boy. 

“It’s them!” 

“Is that the car those fellows stole?” gasped 
the boy, at last understanding her excitement. 
“Cricky!” 

“They are getting away! Oh, Bob!” mur¬ 
mured the girl. 

“Quick! There’s Mr. Grahame across the 
street! He’s the deputy sheriff. I know him! 
And he’s got his car there!” 

Without saying a word to their friends Betty 
and Bob ran across to the county official, who 
was, indeed, just stepping into his roadster. 

“What is the matter?” he asked, observing 
their excitement at once. “Who has stolen the 
moon so it won’t shine to-night?” 

Betty eagerlv explained about the two men 
who had stolen Phineas Cutler’s car and pointed 
out the dust behind the car already at some dis¬ 
tance up the road. 

“Are you sure, young lady?” the deputy sheriff 
demanded. 

“I am sure of the number plate—I cannot be 
mistaken in that,” cried Betty. “But of course, 
I did not see the men just now when they left the 
garage.” 


THE TAIL OF THE KITE 


37 

“Hop in,” said Mr. Grahame decidedly. “You 
can both crowd in here. We’ll see if we can 
pick ’em up before they cross the county line.” 

His engine was already running and he let in 
the clutch. Betty and Bob were scarcely seated 
when the car sprang ahead. Their friends were 
left in front of the store staring after them in 
utter amazement. 

“We’re the tail of the kite,” said Bob, in Bet¬ 
ty’s ear. “That other car is breaking the speed 
laws already. I wonder if we’ll catch them.” 

Then Mr. Grahame began to do a little break¬ 
ing of the speed law himself I 


CHAPTER V 


SURPRISE AND EXPECTATION 

“Mr. Grahame’s car,” Bob Henderson whis¬ 
pered in Betty’s ear, “does not look like much, 
but it certainly has speed.” 

They had left the village behind in half a min¬ 
ute. The deputy sheriff drove, too, with disre¬ 
gard for the road laws which he was supposed 
to uphold. There was, however, official reason 
for this. 

“Oh!” gasped Betty. “Hold on to me, Bob. 
I feel like a popcorn kernel in a hopper. I’m 
likely to bounce out any time!” 

The car swung around a curve seemingly on 
two wheels. It bounced over several uneven 
places in the country highway, and at these times 
of jouncing Betty was sure the motor-car leaped 
completely off the ground like a galloping horse. 

Around another corner they switched, and then 
the deputy sheriff grunted. The car Betty Gor¬ 
don had identified as the stolen one was rolling 
on at moderate speed not many rods ahead. 

“Number seven, ten, two, naught, six,” said 
the officer. “Is that the number, Miss ?” 

38 


SURPRISE AND EXPECTATION 


39 

“Oh, yes! I noted it well up on the Stoneville 
road. It belongs to Mr. Phineas Cutler.” 

“I know him. Brother of Si, the feed and 
grain man.” 

“Yes, sir,” panted Betty. “Mr. Si Cutler’s 
daughter was chasing the automobile thieves, but 
her cart broke down.” 

“I know her, too. Rangey girl. Built a good 
deal like a two-by-four scantling.” 

Betty giggled at this, but she added: 

“One of the young men who were stealing the 
car is named Jasp. The other called him that. 
Sally Cutler said they had tried to cash a bad 
check at her father’s store.” 

“Ha!” ejaculated Mr. Grahame. “All round 
bad eggs, eh? Well, we’ve got ’em.” 

The next moment he shot his car around the 
touring car and back into the middle of the road 
the bigger car had usurped. There was a shout 
from behind as the deputy sheriff’s car slowed 
down, blocking the way. Betty and Bob glanced 
back in amazement. 

They might well be amazed. The man who 
was hastily stopping the bigger car was in minis¬ 
terial dress—a man perhaps forty-odd years of 
age. His companion was likewise soberly 
garbed, and, had Betty and Bob been older, 
could have been mistaken by them for nobody 
but a cleric, but an unfledged one. He was very 


40 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


white, very grave, and was dressed immaculately. 

“Great Peter!” Mr. Grahame exclaimed. 

Betty had never felt so abashed in her life be¬ 
fore. She dared not even look at Bob, for she 
knew that her boy chum was grinning broadly. 

“These the two bad eggs you were telling me 
about, Miss?” asked Mr. Grahame, in a low 
voice. “I ought to have help. I don’t believe I 
can take ’em by myself. Some bad men, I’ll tell 
the world.” 

But just then the older gentleman who sat at 
the steering wheel of his car, hailed them. 

“Mr. Grahame!” he exclaimed, in a nervous 
voice. “What has happened? Is anything 
wrong? Surely I have not been exceeding the 
speed limit? I never can be sure, and my speedo¬ 
meter does not register.” 

“Well, Doctor,” drawled the deputy sheriff, 
“you haven’t been going like a cripple, exactly. 
I noticed when you left the garage at Shadyside 
you weren’t hobbling. But I didn’t stop you on 
those grounds.” 

“Then something has happened?” nervously 
asked the clergyman. 

“Nothing much, Doctor Bennett. Nothing for 
you to worry about. Suppose you introduce me 
to the gentleman with you?” 

“Why—er—certainly. John, this is our very 
efficient sheriff—deputy sheriff, I should say— 


SURPRISE AND EXPECTATION 


41 

Mr. Jackson Grahame. You surely haven’t any 
papers to serve on Mr. John Pouch or me. Mr. 
Grahame?” 

“Not exactly. But, of course, you know funny 
things are always happening in the automobile 
game. You-” 

“Don’t tell me I have run over anything with¬ 
out knowing it, Mr. Grahame!” cried Dr. Ben- 
net, in great anxiety. “I would not want to kill 
a chicken or a dog, or anything with this machine. 
I am so afraid I shall.” 

“You’ll get used to that,” chuckled the deputy 
sheriff. “And, to my knowledge, you haven’t so 
far. But there is something else wrong with 
your car.” 

“Oh! What can that be? I stopped at the 
garage for Mr. Findley to look it over and see 
if anything was wrong with it.” 

“Humph! Anybody else there at Findley’s at 
the time?” asked Mr. Grahame. 

“Another car was just getting away. The 
young men with it had needed some small repair 
work, I believe. I know Mr. Findley came from 
their car to speak to me.” 

Meanwhile the deputy sheriff had got out of 
his automobile and was walking around the big¬ 
ger car reflectively. Betty seized Bob’s arm again 
and pointed to the number plate on the front of 
the clergyman’s car. 



42 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“That’s not it,” she said. 

It was indeed an entirely different license num¬ 
ber from the one she had seen on the rear of the 
car. In a moment Mr. Grahame had returned 
from the back of the clergyman’s car with the 
red number plate in his hand. 

“You weren’t going much too fast, Doctor,” 
he chuckled. “But it is astonishing what an au¬ 
tomobile will pick up by the wind of its own 
velocity. How do you explain this plate being on 
the back of your car?” and he held it out for the 
minister to behold. 

“Why, that’s not my number, Mr. Grahame!” 
cried Dr. Bennett. 

“You’re not telling me any news,” said the 
officer. 

“Attached to my car?” murmured the minister. 

“Very much so. Your own number plate un¬ 
hooked and carried off and this hitched on in its 
place. That is what started us driving after you 
from the Shadyside station.” 

“Oh, my!” gasped the young cleric, for the 
first time speaking. “Are—are we apprehended, 
Dr. Bennett?” 

“I don’t know what for,” sighed the older 
man. 

“Can you describe the two young fellows in 
the car you noticed at Findley’s?” asked Grahame 
briskly. 


SURPRISE AND EXPECTATION 


43 

The doctor could, and did. And his observa¬ 
tions had been so true that Betty Gordon jumped 
up in the roadster and clapped her hands. 

u Those are the men, Mr. Grahame! Those 
are the men!” she cried. “I would know them 
anywhere. And they are bad looking.” 

“The young lady says the truth,” said the 
clergyman, smiling now. “Their faces advertise 
their characters to all beholders. I am sure you 
do not believe that I have any criminal associa¬ 
tion with those men, Mr. Grahame.” 

“Not much, Doctor. But they switched tail- 
plates on you. And for a good reason, I believe. 
I don’t know where they are bound for, but they 
know there’s bound to be a hue and cry out for 
them. And if anything happens, or a car is trav¬ 
eling fast, it is the rear number plate that is 
usually noticed. An ‘accident,’ so-called, can hap¬ 
pen to their front plate and they can explain its 
loss. Your plate attached to the rear of that 
stolen car may cause you some trouble, Doctor.” 

“Oh, my! I hope not!” cried the white-faced 
young man beside the clergyman. “Perhaps, Dr. 
Bennett, I would better get out here.” 

“If you do, John,” said the older man rather 
grimly, “you will have a ten-mile walk to my 
house. So I advise you to sit still.” 

“Oh, nothing very bad will happen,” observed 
Mr. Grahame, walking back to his own car. “If 


44 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


anybody calls you up about the number plate, 
Doctor, refer him to me. All right. Thank you.” 
And he stepped into his car and pressed his foot 
on the starter. 

“Oh,” murmured Betty Gordon, “I hope you 
won’t blame me too much, Mr. Grahame. I did 
think it was the stolen car.” 

“You are all right, child,” rejoined the deputy 
sheriff, as he backed the roadster around and 
finally headed back toward the station. “You 
are a quick and observant girl. It may be that 
through your sharp eyesight we can apprehend 
those fellows.” 

“That would be great, Betty!” exclaimed Bob. 

“Where shall I drop you two?” added Mr. 
Grahame. 

“I must get right back to the school,” said 
Betty, suddenly anxious at the delay the adventure 
had caused. 

When the deputy sheriff understood the situa¬ 
tion he insisted on driving over to Shadyside 
School to leave Betty. Afterward he drove 
around the end of the lake and left Bob at the 
gate of Salsette. 

During the next week Bob and Betty had no 
opportunity of meeting to discuss the affair, and 
neither of them learned at that time anything 
further about the motor-car thieves or what had 
become of them. 


SURPRISE AND EXPECTATION 


45 

In truth the young folks from Washington and 
its environs, although none of them were grad¬ 
uating from Shadyside or Salsette at the end of 
this term, were so busy during these last days 
that they could not think of many outside matters 
save the delights of the jaunt to Ocean Park that 
now was plain in the offing. 

Bob Henderson ran down to the shore resort, 
as he had been instructed to do, and came back 
with glowing reports about the delights of the 
boardwalk, the comforts of the cottage that had 
been selected through Mr. Gordon’s agency, and 
the wonderful bathing and fishing that was prom¬ 
ised them. 

Betty had received another letter from her 
Uncle Dick, and he promised to arrive at Ocean 
Park on the very day the party from Shadyside 
would reach there. Miss Anderson, who was the 
girls’ physical instructor, had long since given her 
word to act as chaperone. Mrs. Eustice had ap¬ 
proved of all the arrangements. 

All, therefore, as the day approached were on 
the qui vive of expectation. 


CHAPTER VI 


THOSE TUCKER TWINS 

A June break-up at Shadyside was an event 
When Betty Gordon and her particular friends 
had departed from the school at the time of the 
Christmas vacation it was not like this, although 
there had been at that time much bustle and con¬ 
fusion. 

Now there was something just a little serious 
in the leave-takings. For there were seniors who 
would never come back to school again, save to 
visit. And these who had graduated seemed to 
want to bid even the youngest and least impor¬ 
tant of their schoolmates good-by. “The young¬ 
sters” suddenly found themselves of importance. 

Without knowing how she had done it, Betty 
had made many friends among these older girls. 
Some of them were wise enough to see in Betty’s 
character those qualities that were bound to make 
her a leader in the school activities as she grew 
older. Besides, she had taken a prominent part 
already in the social affairs of the Mysterious 
Four, the Shadyside secret society. 

46 


THOSE TUCKER TWINS 


47 

So, with all the volubility and excitement, this 
undercurrent of change impressed them all, even 
light-hearted Bobby Littell. Full as Betty’s 
crowd was of expectation of what was awaiting 
them at Ocean Park, they saw the hour approach 
for leaving school with no little sorrow. 

Would Shadyside be just the same when they 
came back to it in the fall? 

“It is never the same,” Miss Anderson told 
them, with a little sigh. “We always miss the 
faces of those who do not return, and we must 
get used to the new faces of those who first enter. 
I never get used to it myself.” 

The physical culture instructor was gay 
enough, however, when they all got into the bus 
with their hand baggage. Perhaps, more than 
her young charges, Miss Anderson was glad to 
throw off the responsibilities of the arduous school 
year. 

“You do make such a splendid shap-er-onge,” 
sighed Libbie, trying to give the word an atro¬ 
cious French pronunciation. “Suppose we had 
Miss Prettyman!” 

“Now,” said Bobby, briskly, “let us talk of 
nothing but pleasant things. Why remind us of 
Miss Prettyman, who is, of course, a dear if you 
only know how to take her.” 

“I never could take her myself,” groaned 
Betty. 


48 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

They were a gay party as they rode to the 
station. And there they sighted six boys in cit¬ 
izens’ dress doing a war dance around a heap of 
baggage which they evidently considered neces¬ 
sary to take by hand—bags, racket-cases, jointed 
fishing-rods, and a number of queer-shaped pack¬ 
ages that might contain any number of surprising 
things. 

As the Shadyside bus drew up at the platform 
the girls heard this anything-but-mellow chant, 
undoubtedly originated by the Tucker Twins, and 
uttered at the top of the boys’ voices: 

“ ‘I’m Salsette born! 

And Salsette bred! 

And when I die— 

I’ll be Salsette dead!’ ” 

This chant was repeated several times and 
then came a funny little whistle which was pecul¬ 
iar to the boys from the military academy. Then 
the boys went through a very amusing mock 
manual of arms. 

“I don’t see why we Shadyside girls don’t have 
a battle-cry,” murmured Libbie, stumbling out of 
the bus. “It’s so romantic.” 

But Bobby was determined not to approve 
whole-heartedly of anything Tommy Tucker 
originated. “It’s the only way to keep that boy 


THOSE TUCKER TWINS 


49 

in hand,” she had confided to Betty Gordon more 
than once. ‘‘Praise him, and you spoil him.” 

Now she watched the six stamping around the 
pile of baggage and shaking their canes with the 
Salsette colors tied to the handles as though they 
were spears, while they repeated over and over 
that senseless rigamarole, and she shook her head. 

“What do you call that dance?” she demanded 
sternly. “The Mohawk Shimmy? I think it is 
disgraceful. Where do you think you are going 
—to the South Sea Islands?” 

“Fancy taking a Mohawk Indian dance to the 
South Seas,” put in her sister Louise. 

Bob Henderson refused to take offense. He 
broke into laughter at Louise Littell’s comment. 

“Well, we are going south—or southeast. 
And we are going to the sea. And let me tell you 
there is the dandiest kind of island off one end 
of the boardwalk down there. It’s romantic¬ 
looking enough to suit Libbie. All rocks, and 
ocean caves, and spouting rocks, and a grim old 
thing on the top that looks like a gallows where 
they used to hang pirates.” 

“O-o-oh! Pirates!” was the general chorus. 
“Pirates!” 

“Only it isn’t,” continued Bob, grinning. “It’s 
an old beacon which hasn’t been used since they 
built the lighthouse near by. But, anyhow, Rocky 
Island is romantic to look at.” 


50 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“Now, young people,’’ Miss Anderson broke 
in, stepping out of the bus last of all, “I hear the 
train. Tickets-” 

“All here, Miss Anderson,” said Bob politely, 
coming forward with his hat off to greet her and 
with the bunch,of tickets in his hand. “I have 
seen to that. And the trunks from Shadyside are 
checked together with ours.” 

“You are a general,” declared the teacher, with 
a smile, for she liked Bob. 

The other boys became immensely polite and 
deferential too, and unusually formal, for the 
idea of having a chaperone travel with them 
rather shook their usual spirits. Miss Anderson 
soon put them at their ease, however, although 
she did look askance at that wonderful pile of 
hand baggage. 

“Don’t you think you could have shipped some 
of that, Bob Henderson?” she asked. 

“Most of that,” said Bob dryly, but with spark¬ 
ling eyes, “is what we forgot.” 

“But it seems you haven’t forgotten any of it,” 
the lady said a little grimly. 

“We forgot it until after the trunks went off 
last evening. Funny how much a fellow will col¬ 
lect around him at school. My steamer trunk 
was packed solid; but I have two suitcases, a bag, 
and a bundle in that pile.” 

“Talk about girls traveling with a truck load 



THOSE TUCKER TWINS 


51 

of baggage!” cried Bobby, with scorn. “You 
boys must all be Beau Brummels.” 

“Oh,” said Timothy Derby in his matter-of- 
fact way, “there aren’t so many clothes. Oh, no. 
But I’ve so many books-” 

“Now, Timothy!” exclaimed Norma Guerin, 
“are you going to do nothing but read books all 
your vacation?” 

“Oh, no. But suppose we shouldn’t have any 
books to read? Wouldn’t it be awful? And on 
rainy days?” 

“Stop it!” ejaculated Bobby. “He is consid¬ 
ering rainy days already. Don’t look for any¬ 
thing but sunshine on this vacation, Timothy 
Derby—don’t you dare!” 

Tommy Tucker had sidled toward her and now 
whispered in Bobby’s ear: 

“Don’t worry about his books. He packed a 
bottle of red ink with them, anyway. And I had 
a bottle of chili sauce that I couldn’t get into my 
bag; so I stuck it in his. When we got here, Jim, 
the driver, tossed the bags off and I heard some¬ 
thing smash when Tim’s bag landed. So, it 
doesn’t matter which bottle is broken, the books 
won’t be very inviting when we get down to the 
shore.” 

“Oh!” cried Bobby, giggling. “Does he know 
it?” 

“No. Why tell him? I don’t believe in mak- 



BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


52 

ing people feel unhappy beforehand. It will be 
bad enough when he opens the bag,” and the dark 
twin grinned impishly. 

The route to Ocean Park was such that the 
party must change at one point. Bob had se¬ 
cured seats in the chair car for Betty’s party to 
this junction; beyond that they would have res¬ 
ervations in the sleeping car and would arrive 
at the well-known seashore resort early the next 
morning. 

It chanced that the party boarding the train at 
Shadyside numbered only Betty and her friends 
and Miss Anderson, the party having waited for 
Miss Anderson over one day after the closing of 
the school. The few passengers already in the 
chair car possibly might not have selected for 
their own comfort quite such an active and noisy 
party as Miss Anderson’s twelve charges. 

They all tried to get together; but there was 
not much selection of chairs, and some of the 
young people were at one end of the car and some 
at the other. Libbie and Timothy managed to 
sit together, as usual. Miss Anderson had a 
chair across the aisle from them. But the re¬ 
mainder of the crowd were at the other end of 
the car. 

They were on both sides of the aisle, and 
mixed up with other passengers; and the hand 
baggage had to be put up anywhere there was 


THOSE TUCKER TWINS 


53 

room for it. Some of the adult passengers took 
this influx of boys and girls good-naturedly and 
offered to exchange seats so that the friends might 
be all together. 

One couple at this end of the coach, however, 
displayed no desire to be friendly in the least. 
The man was very prim looking and had a sharp, 
sneering face, while his companion was over¬ 
dressed, wore too much jewelry, and looked at 
the young folks as she might have stared at so 
many dirty urchins playing in a mud puddle. 

She actually sniffed, wrinkling her powdered 
nose, and said rather loudly to the man facing 
her: 

“Horrid! I did really think, Chawles, that we 
would have some privacy in this car. School¬ 
boys! Ha! Their boots always smell of black¬ 
ing, and it is so hot in here, anyway. I never 
will travel again without our private car, 
Chawles.” 

“Chawles” appeared to take quite as much 
offense as the woman. He, too, stared at both 
boys and girls as though he thought they had no 
real right on earth. 

“Cracky!” whispered Bob in Betty’s ear, 
“don’t you feel awfully put down and sort of 
overwhelmed?” 

“No, I don’t!” ejaculated Betty. She was just 
a little angry. “No matter how we behave we 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


54 

can’t behave worse than they do. And we’re only 
in fun.” 

U I wouldn’t want to do anything to bring Miss 
Anderson down on us-” 

“You’d better not,” Betty broke in. 

Just then the bejeweled young woman said 
something to “Chawles,” who pressed the button 
for the porter. That uniformed functionary ap¬ 
peared on the jump. He must have had previous 
experience with the haughty couple. 

“Porter,” said “Chawles,” “start that fan back 
there. It will at least keep the atmosphere stir¬ 
ring.” 

“Humph!” muttered Teddy Tucker, “we must 
have brought an awfully bad smell into this car 
with us. Or was it here before we came?’ 

“Hush I” commanded Louise Littell. 

It was a hot day, and the revolving fans at 
either end of the car helped a little. But Teddy’s 
remark seemed to have put an idea into his twin’s 
head that the cyclone from the fan aided in bring¬ 
ing to a point. 

“Oh, cheese!” ejaculated Tommy, using his 
favorite exclamation, but under his breath. “Ted, 
did you notice that fellow sitting near the door 
of the next car when we got aboard? The little, 
dumpy, red-faced man eating his lunch out of a 
shoe-box?” 

“That little German?” 



THOSE TUCKER TWINS 


55 

‘‘Exactly. Know what he was eating?” The 
twins stared at each other. They often seemed 
to think of the same things and in exactly the 
same way. They did not have to evolve speci¬ 
fications and a diagram when it came to mischief. 

Tommy raised his eyebrows. Teddy nodded 
understandingly. Then the former got up and 
strolled to the door of the car and a moment later 
disappeared. 


CHAPTER VII 


AN ODOROUS GALE 

Betty and Louise tried to keep the crowd 
straight, and that not alone because of Miss An¬ 
derson’s presence. They were not afraid of Miss 
Anderson; they knew her kind heart too well and 
were quite aware that she had fun-loving propen¬ 
sities. But after a year under school discipline, 
to say the least, Betty Gordon was more sedate 
than she previously had been. Probably Bobby 
Littell never would be sedate. 

Betty’s influence with her dearest chum, how¬ 
ever, was very great. Although Bobby was the 
older, Betty’s was the stronger character. And 
Louise being “such a quiet puss,” as Bobby agreed, 
together they kept the latter in more or less 
proper bounds. 

But who could keep in check such a pair of wild 
ones as the Tucker twins? Nor did Betty dream 
of what those two scapegraces had evolved in 
their minds. Betty and the other girls tried to 
ignore the impolite couple across the aisle. Chat- 
56 


AN ODOROUS GALE 


5 7 

ting and laughing and joking, as long as there was 
no rough play, should not have offended 
“Chawles” and his bejeweled lady. 

“I don’t suppose they were ever as young as we 
are,” Bobby had whispered almost at first. “My 
mother says that there are some people who seem 
to have been born already grown up.” 

But the girls were not minded to give much of 
their attention to the offensive couple. And the 
boys were only bent on teasing the girls or chat¬ 
tering among themselves. Outbursts of laughter 
and repartee, however, when they occurred 
seemed to annoy “Chawles” and his wife enor¬ 
mously. 

“I’d hate to have such a disposition as those 
two have,” observed Winifred Marion Brown in 
disgust. 

“They must have caught it early and it struck 
in,” said Gil Lane. “Hullo! where’s Tommy 
been?” 

The dark twin just then came into the car. He 
was preternaturally grave, and when one of the 
Tucker boys was solemn it was time to “ ’ware 
ship,” so Bob always said. It did seem as though 
those two brothers were more than half mischief! 

As Tommy closed the car door he reached up 
and turned off the small fan that “Chawles” had 
requested the porter to start. These storage bat¬ 
tery fans do not produce much of a gale, but the 


58 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

streamers of gaily colored paper the porter had 
attached to this one had been fluttering as though 
they were blown by the breath of a cyclone. As 
the fan stopped Tommy Tucker slyly smeared 
what was on a bit of paper in his hand the whole 
length of the strips of paper! 

“That boy has stopped that fan, Chawles!” 
complained the bejeweled lady. 

“Chawles” turned around sharply and shouted: 

“Hey, boy! What are you doing there ? Start 
that fan again and let it alone!” 

“Oh, yes, sir,” stammered Tommy Tucker, in 
much apparent fear. 

He touched the switch again and left the fan 
buzzing while he disappeared into the men’s wash¬ 
room, where he removed what stuck to his fingers 
with some difficulty. When he strolled back it 
was Ted who burst out with: 

“I say, Tom, your boots smell horrid. I wish 
you’d buy some scented shoe polish.” 

Some of the others began to sniff a bit, but inno¬ 
cently enough. Gil Lane remarked: 

“There is a funny smell in here. Don’t you get 
it, Bob?” 

Bob fixed an accusing eye on Tommy Tucker. 

“What did you do?” he demanded in a whisper. 

“Me?” asked the dark twin with appalling in¬ 
nocence. “Why pick on me?” 


AN ODOROUS GALE 


59 

His brother was stuffing his handkerchief into 
his mouth and looking out of the window. 

“Chawles, there is a horrid smell in here,” said 
the nervous lady across the aisle, who was directly 
facing the cyclone from the fan. “Dear me! I 
positively refuse ever to travel again in a car with 
hoodlums.” 

“I think she ought to have a private railroad to 
travel on, don’t you?” whispered Bobby rathef 
angrily. 

But then she got a whiff of the odorous gale and 
put her handkerchief to her own nose. 

“What is it?” gasped Norma and Alice Guerin 
in chorus. 

“It ought to be reported to the Board of 
Health, whatever it is,” giggled Bobby, who 
guessed now that the Tucker twins had been 
guilty of causing the offensive odor. But Ted had 
recovered his gravity and both he and Tommy 
shed perfect innocence about them in both look 
and manner. 

“Gee!” exclaimed Gil Lake, in an undertone. 
“There must be something dead in this car.” 

“Chawles!” exclaimed the troubled lady, an¬ 
grily. “I cannot stand this! Call the porter. I 
insist that we go to the farther end of the car. 
Tell him to take our hand baggage down there.” 

Her husband pushed the button again, and in 
ran the porter. “Chawles” gave his orders. 


60 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“Yes, sah! Yes’m!” stammered the porter. 
Then he got a straight blast from the fan and 
almost staggered. “Ma soul and body, we must 
be goin’ by a soap fact’ry, sah!” 

But he grabbed the light baggage and headed 
the procession down the aisle. Tommy jumped 
up, stopped the fan, yanked off the paper stream¬ 
ers, and took them into the men’s room; then 
he started the fan again and slid into his seat with 
a most benevolent smile on his face. 

“Now Derby and Libbie can come up here with 
us,” he said. “Nothing like having the whole 
bunch together. We can have more fun.” 

When the exchange had been made and they had 
all settled, giggling, into their places, Betty de¬ 
manded sternly: 

“What was it, you naughty, naughty boy?” 

“Oh, cheese!” muttered Tom, grinning. 

“That is no answer,” declared Betty. 

“Oh, cracky!” ejaculated Bob Henderson, sud¬ 
denly guessing the meaning of the dark twin’s ob¬ 
servation. “I see. It was cheese. Where did 
you get it?” 

“Fellow in the day coach had some cheese sand¬ 
wiches. And it was ripe—no doubt of that. I 
got him to sell me one,” whispered Tommy Tuck¬ 
er, in high delight. 

“You are a horrid boy!” declared Louise 
sharply. 


AN ODOROUS GALE 


61 


“All’s fair in love and war,” declared Ted 
promptly. “And we got rid of that couple, didn’t 
we?” 

“Don’t for pity’s sake let Miss Anderson hear 
of this,” commanded Betty severely. “What do 
you suppose she would say?” 

“She’s too far away to get the odorous odor,” 
chuckled Tom. “But I thought that darky would 
faint.” 

“Soap factory!” ejaculated Ted, and hid his 
face behind his handkerchief again. 

After that Betty kept watch more strictly over 
the too exuberant twins. She confessed to Bobby 
that she always felt that she was traveling with 
dynamite when Tom and Ted were of the party. 

They reached the junction where they were to 
change trains without further trouble and all 
tumbled out on the platform, the boys loaded like 
pack burros with their own luggage and that be¬ 
longing to the girls and Miss Anderson. The 
connection for the Ocean Park train was not very 
good, for they had more than an hour to wait. 
But there was a good restaurant in the station at 
this junction and they trooped in there and sur¬ 
rounded two tables. 

“I think it’s lots of fun traveling,” sighed Alice 
Guerin. “I shall never get tired of it, I know. 
And just think, Norma! A year ago we never 
supposed we would be able to travel much.” 


62 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


For, thanks to Betty Gordon’s finding the treas¬ 
ure of Indian Chasm, told of in “Betty Gordon at 
Boarding School,” the financial circumstances of 
the Guerin sisters had vastly changed within the 
past nine months. 

“We have a great deal to be thankful for,” said 
Norma. “Thankful to Betty and Bob,” and she 
smiled gratefully at the two leaders of the expedi¬ 
tion. 

Miss Anderson effaced herself just enough to 
make the young folks forget that she was sup¬ 
posed to be in charge of them. She was “good 
fun,” but without doubt her presence subdued the 
more reckless expressions of animal spirits among 
the twelve. 

When they boarded the Pullman at last the 
berths were already being made up, and at Miss 
Anderson’s behest the entire party went imme¬ 
diately to bed. While the train rolled through the 
less mountainous country toward the coast the 
party from Shadyside and Salsette slept only to 
dream of the delights awaiting them at Ocean 
Park. 

Betty and Bob, or indeed any of the party, 
might not have bestirred themselves that next 
morning until the Pullman was sidetracked in the 
railroad yard at Ocean Park had it not been for 
a sudden and startling noise which began at an un¬ 
seasonable hour. 


AN ODOROUS GALE 


63 

Betty awoke to find that the train had halted. 
She peered through the window beside her and 
saw that they had reached no station, but were 
halted on a flat, or swamp, which was smothered 
in mist. But that startling droning sound that 
was awakening all the passengers in the car came 
nearer and nearer. It now seemed almost over¬ 
head. 

“What is it? What’s happened?” were the 
cries uttered by several of the girls. 

“What’s gone wrong?” shouted Gil Lane from 
somewhere down the aisle. 

“It’s another train! There’s going to be a col¬ 
lision!” shrieked Alice Guerin. 

“It’s a motor-car!” declared W. M. Brown. 

“It’s a motor all right,” suddenly sang out Bob 
Henderson. “But it’s in the air. A plane of 
some kind. Look out, fellows, and see if you can 
glimpse it. I bet the pilot’s lost in this fog and he 
doesn’t know how close to the ground he is sail¬ 
ing.” 

“Jimminy!” ejaculated Ted Tucker. “Suppose 
he hits this old Pullman?” 

Upon that suggestion there arose a chorus of 
shrieks, and almost everybody bounced out into 
the aisle. 


CHAPTER VIII 


sx-43 

Betty Gordon was not the only one who ran 
up the window shade beside her berth to see out 
into the fog-covered flat on which the train had 
halted. All up and down the car was a confusion 
of voices, though more than half drowned in the 
roar of the heavy motor of the flying machine. 

Suddenly Betty shrieked at the top of her voice. 

“There it comes! Oh, look at itl” 

“I see it,” cried Bobby, who hurled herself back 
into the lower berth beside Betty. 

The misty figure of the great plane loomed 
through the fog, and it was barely skimming the 
tops of the cat-tail rushes a few rods beyond the 
railroad fence. 

“Tell him to stop! Tell him to stop!” cried 
one of the other girls. “Can’t he see this train 
standing right here?” 

Whether the pilot did see the train or not, the 
nose of the plane suddenly lifted, and sweeping 
in a wide half circle the great machine slid past the 
stationary Pullman. 

<4 


SX-43 


65 

“It’s a seaplane,” cried Bob Henderson. “See 
it, Betsey? I never was so close to one before. 
There! Get the marks on the under side of it?” 

The train suddenly started forward with a jerk. 
The seaplane sailed up and up, over their heads, 
but did not pass out of sight too quickly for Betty 
to note the marks Bob had called their atten¬ 
tion to. 

“ ‘SX-43,’ ” repeated Betty. “I saw the letters 
and figures as plain as plain. Did you, Bob ?” 

She came back into the aisle, having got into 
her robe and slippers. 

“That’s just what I made it. That pilot was 
mighty reckless, wasn’t he? He’d been in the bog 
in another second if he hadn’t shot her up again. 
Cracky! But I’d like to go up in one of those 
things.” 

“Oh, Bob! Not really?” 

“Sure I would,” Bob declared with continued 
warmth. “It must be funny to look down from 
up there in the sky.” 

“Not so funny, I guess,” drawled W. M. 
Brown, “if you happened to be spinning down, 
ready to bump into the ground like that fellow 
was.” 

“Maybe he was just cutting capers,” Bob said, 
grinning. 

“And he might cut them when you were in the 


f 


66 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


plane,” sighed Betty. “No! Nobody shall hire 
me to go up in one of those things.” 

“Pooh!” cried Bob, with some disdain even if 
it was Betty whom he derided. “You know we’ll 
see a lot of those planes down here at Ocean Park. 
The Atlantic Aviation Corporation has a station 
just north of the town beyond the cove and Rocky 
Island. They will let you go up for a little while 
for twenty-five dollars-” 

“That puts a stopper on your aviating desires, 
Bob,” laughed Bobby. “Now, if it was twenty- 
five cents for a ride, maybe we would all go.” 

“Not me,” repeated Betty firmly. 

There was scarcely time after that for the 
young people to make their toilettes before the 
train pulled into the station at Ocean Park. Nat¬ 
urally, the excitement about the seaplane that had 
so nearly collided with the train had awakened 
everybody in the Pullman and the coach was emp¬ 
tied very quickly when the train came to a stand¬ 
still. 

Out into the train shed swept the young people 
and through the gate to the station and the street, 
the boys again laden with their multitudinous bags 
and parcels. Bob led the way and had a quick 
eye for an expressman who would take the bag¬ 
gage, trunks and all, to the bungalow which, the 
boys and girls believed, would be “the scene of 
some high old times.” 



SX-43 


67 

The station was some distance to the rear of 
the shore front and the boardwalk. This latter, 
Bob had told them, was bordered by the principal 
hotels, casinos, moving picture houses, stores and 
important pleasure concessions. He led them now 
in the opposite direction, heading inland, for the 
bungalow was so near that they were to walk. 

“Smell that salt fog, Betsey?” he said to Bet¬ 
ty. “Do you taste it? Nothing like that ever 
reaches Washington—or Shadyside. This is a 
sure-enough sea fog.” 

“It was thick enough for that seaplane to come 
near crashing into the train, Bob,” said Betty. 
“But it is disappearing now, thank goodness.” 

The fog was shredding away under the beams 
of the morning sun, and before they reached the 
bungalow it was lovely and sunny. The girls ex¬ 
pressed their delight at the appearance of the 
house; but Betty started to run for the porch 
when.she saw Mr. Gordon standing there. 

“Uncle Dick! You dear!” she cried, flinging 
herself into his arms. “It seems an age since I 
saw you. You grow handsomer all the time!” 

“You’ll make me vain, Betty,” he replied, laugh¬ 
ing. “And how are you all?” They crowded 
around him in a vociferous group. “So this is 
Miss Anderson, of whom I have heard so much? 
I expect we are going to have our hands full with 
this wild mob.” 


68 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


Miss Anderson smiled, and she could smile very 
sweetly. 

“Don’t cross your bridges before you come to 
them, Mr. Gordon,” she said. “I promise you 
that we shall manage between us. This is a lovely 
place. I am grateful for your invitation here. 
Most vacations I have spent at a teachers’ home, 
where one positively can never get away from 
talking shop. Here I believe I shall even be able 
to forget that Roberta Littell is my pupil.” 

“Oh! Why pick on me?” cried Bobby, as the 
others laughed. “Am I so awfully, awfully worse 
than the others?” 

“You certainly are when it comes to the use of 
English,” laughed Miss Anderson. 

They separated into little groups and went 
tearing through the house and all around it. All 
but Betty and Bob, for they went more sedately 
through the bungalow with Miss Anderson and 
decided upon the rooms to which the guests were 
to be appointed. There was an elderly and kind¬ 
looking cook and housekeeper, a man servant, and 
a parlor and chambermaid. It was a well ap¬ 
pointed house, much better furnished than the 
usual summer bungalow. 

In an hour the baggage was allotted to its 
proper rooms, the girls had unpacked and the boys 
had grabbed out of their possessions such clothing 
and other things as they needed first. Unpack? 


SX-43 69 

Why do that until a fellow needed something par¬ 
ticular? 

There was no wail from the room Timothy 
Derby shared with W. M. Brown. And the other 
boys wondered at that, for they were sure Tim¬ 
othy would open his bag of books the first thing 
and find them either bathed in red ink or mussed 
up with chili sauce. Nothing happened, and lurk¬ 
ing outside the door the other boys pounced on 
Winifred Marion when he first appeared. 

“What’s he doing? Hasn’t he found it out?” 
demanded the twins. 

“Did it muss up the poetry much?” Bob asked. 

W. M. chuckled in great amusement. “The 
joke’s on you, Tommy Tucker,” he whispered. 
“Neither the red ink nor the sauce bottle broke. 
You know that flask of Bohemian glass in which 
he had pebbles each initialed and dated, picked up 
at the home of every poet and author he has ever 
visited, and he has made pilgrimages to all he 
could reach, don’t you?” 

“And that’s what broke?” groaned Tommy. 

“Yes. He’s pickin’ ’em up now. No use wait¬ 
ing for him, for there are dozens of ’em, and 
they’ve rolled in all directions. He’ll be an hour 
at that job,” finished W. M. Brown. 

So they ran off, with those of the girls who 
were ready, to take their first look at the board¬ 
walk and the ocean rolling in so smoothly and so 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


70 

gently breaking against the granite bulkhead* 
There were a few people fishing off the rocks; 
there were several power boats and sailing vessels 
off shore; on the sheltered bathing beach the end¬ 
less throng of bathers was already gathering, and 
most of the concessions stacked between the ho¬ 
tels and picture houses and restaurants were open¬ 
ing. But it was still early in the pleasure-seekers’ 
day. 

There were roller-chairs to be hired; but the 
young folks did not want to test these on this oc¬ 
casion. They walked or ran the entire length of 
the boardwalk. 

“Just to get our bearings,” Bob said. 

Returning, Betty and the others, including Tim¬ 
othy Derby, joined the party and the exploration 
was extended to the northern end of the walk. 

“So that is the pirate island, Bob?” cried Bob¬ 
by. “That thing on top of it does look like a 
gibbet, doesn’t it? Sort of.” 

“How romantic!” murmured Libbie placidly. 

“Cat’s foot!” muttered Bobby. “Oh, see!” she 
added in the next breath. “There’s another sea¬ 
plane. Rising right over the island and coming 
in-shore, just exactly as though it were jumping 
a hurdle.” 

“It’s the same one,” Betty cried. “The SX-43. 
Dear me, Bob, do you suppose that pilot is going 
to smash into something again?” 


SX-43 


|f 

“He didn’t smash into anything this morning,” 
replied Bob, laughing. “See him swoop down! 
There! He’s taken to the water like a great 
duck. Cracky! I’d like to be in it.” 

But Betty was very sure she did not crave such 
an adventure. She was quite fascinated, however, 
as were the others, by the sight of the great flying 
machine. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE BUNGALOW CANOE CLUB 

There was not much done that first day. At 
least, none of the “dizzy dozen” (of course, Tom¬ 
my Tucker originated that phrase) seemed to 
think much was accomplished. Yet not for one 
minute had they been still, not even at meal time. 

Still, and all, they made plans. Oh, hundreds 
of plans! And they came to one real decision. 
In that pretty cove behind Rocky Island was a 
boathouse—more than one, in fact—and the man 
owned many canoes. Bob discovered that they 
could be hired for the season, and with Mr. Gor¬ 
don he went over there and looked over the stock 
and picked out six of the best. 

They all had sails as well as paddles, and 
Uncle Dick arranged for a boatman who would 
teach the boys the use of these sails. All of 
them and most of the girls could paddle a canoe, 
of course; but sailing these canoes on rather rough 
water was different from sailing the canoes on the 
lake between Shadyside School and Salsette. 

72 


THE BUNGALOW CANOE CLUB 


73 

“We’ll have a bully time,” Teddy Tucker de¬ 
clared. “And we’ve got to have a club, of 
course.” 

So, after dinner that evening the Bungalow 
Canoe Club came into existence. Timothy and 
Libbie were put on the rules committee by ac¬ 
clamation and were left in the library to their own 
devices to formulate those rules while the rest of 
the crowd danced to the music of a talking ma¬ 
chine in the big living room. 

Uncle Dick was advisory council in the forma¬ 
tion of the rules, and his principal rule was that 
no member of the Bungalow Canoe Club should 
go out in any craft without first taking the advice 
of one of the experienced boatmen regarding the 
weather. 

“You young folks know little about a ‘sea spell’ 
and are more or less heedless of weather signs,” 
Mr. Gordon said. “So I insist that you have pro¬ 
fessional advice regarding this matter.” 

Otherwise, neither he nor Miss Anderson inter¬ 
fered with the young folks’ plans. Before break¬ 
fast in the morning the whole crowd prepared for 
an outing on the water, and as soon as the meal 
was dispatched the twelve set out for the boat¬ 
house, which was fully half a mile from the 
bungalow. 

Behind the line of hotels and other important 
buildings which faced the boardwalk, and between 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


74 

it and the residential colony where the bungalow 
was situated, were several buildings and scaffold¬ 
ings devoted to “rides” and “chutes” such as are 
common to seaside resorts. 

These more “rowdy” entertainments were not 
allowed on the boardwalk proper. But they of¬ 
fered, just the same, a possibility for amusement 
when other things failed. 

“And there’s quite a good-sized tent show yon¬ 
der,” Bob Henderson explained, pointing out the 
canvas “top” with its strings of gay banners. “It’s 
something like a circus. We’ll have to take that 
in some day soon.” 

“Look! That must be part of the circus right 
now,” Gil Lane cried, pointing up the side street 
that led toward the big tent. “See what’s com¬ 
ing? Or do I see something the rest of you 
can’t?” and he grinned broadly. 

“Oh!” cried Bobby, clasping her hands. “There 
it is again! The zebra! Girls! Do you suppose 
it is the same one? Can that be Sally Cutler?” 

“That is surely Sally,” agreed Norma Guerin. 

“What fun!” Betty cried. “Mr. Si Cutler must 
have got a concession down here at Ocean Park. 
Now we are going to have stirring times! Couldn’t 
help it with Sally-” 

“Oh, girls, that is her!” interrupted Bobby, and 
started on a run to meet the trotting zebra which 
was approaching along the narrow street. It 



THE BUNGALOW CANOE CLUB 


7 & 

drew easily behind it a little four-wheeled wagon 
with high canvas sides on which was painted in 
the gaudiest of colors: 

CORWIN’S CANINE CIRCUS 
and 

Cabinet of Curios 

THE GREATEST AGGLOMERATION OFT 
STRANGE PEOPLES IN THE WORLD 


Marvelous! Educational! Romantic! 

“Well, sure enough that last word will catch 
Libbie,” Louise remarked, while the entire party 
waited and stared at the approaching turnout. 

“Can that be Sally?” repeated Bobby. 

For without doubt the farm girl was vastly 
changed in appearance from what she had been 
when the Shadyside girls had formerly met her. 
She drove the zebra with red reins and his harness 
was cream colored. She was dressed just as gaily 
as the zebra. She wore some kind of princess 
frock of gray trimmed with gay bead embroidery 
and further picked out with gold braid put on in 
all sorts of curlicues, and she wore a white hat 
with a great red plume on it. If this was the out¬ 
fit Sally had mentioned as having seen in a Brack-* 




76 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

enbury emporium, the storekeeper must have been 
glad to get rid of it at any price. 

“Why, Sally Cutler!” gasped Betty, arriving 
beside the advertising wagon. “Is this really 
you?” 

“Didn’t know me at first, did you?” demanded 
Sally proudly. “This don’t look like gingham and 
a sunbonnet, does it? My!” and she sighed with 
ecstasy. 

“I shouldn’t have recognized you had it not 
been for the zebra,” admitted Betty. 

“Yes, I reckon I look pretty fine,” said Sally, 
with satisfaction. 

“Do you belong to that circus?” 

“Pop bought into it. There’s a bunch of dogs, 
and the fat lady and Skinny—that’s what I call 
the skeleton—and Mrs. Michaels, the lady with 
the beard, and her son, Ben, the tattooed boy— 
he’s awfully nice—and some others. Must be seen 
to be appreciated—like it says on the handbills. 
You’ll come to the show?” 

“Of course we will,” agreed Betty, as the other 
young folks gathered around. “You remember 
these other girls, Sally?” 

“Oh, yes,” said Sally, nodding and smiling 
broadly. 

“And these boys are our friends. We are all 
staying down here for a while,” went on Betty, in 


THE BUNGALOW CANOE CLUB 


77 

explanation, and repeated the names of the 
amused boys. 

Sally acknowledged the general introduction 
cheerfully. She was not in the least bashful. 

“You bring ’em all to the show,” said Sally to 
Betty. “It’s only a quarter each. That’ll make 
three dollars for the till, and every little bit helps. 
I sell tickets to both afternoon and evening shows. 
We’ve got one of those shooters in the cage. All 
I have to do is to take the money and make 
change and press a button for the ticket to shoot 
out. Oh, Corwin’s Canine Circus is up to date.” 

Everybody was laughing and asking questions 
by this time. If the boys were inclined to joke 
Sally a little, Betty and the girls took her part and 
squelched them most properly. 

“Oh, Sally!” Betty cried, “did you ever hear 
anything of those two young men who stole your 
uncle’s car?” 

“They never nabbed ’em,” answered Sally. 
“But Uncle Phin got his car back. It cost him 
two hundred dollars to do it. Now he’s got it 
chained in his barn, and with a padlock on the 
chain. Guess ’twon’t be stole again.” 

Betty did not tell Sally at that time of the trick 
the thieves had played on Dr. Bennett at Shady- 
side Station. Sally promised to leave her ticket¬ 
selling job long enough, when the crowd came to 
the circus, to introduce them to the freaks—espe- 


78 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

dally to that “awfully nice” Ben Michaels, the 
tattooed boy. 

“For the love of Mike!” exclaimed Bobby, as 
the zebra started on again. “Sally certainly is 
enthralled by the tattooed boy. 

“I think it’s real romantic,” murmured Libbie. 

“Oh, Libbie!” ejaculated her cousin. “Maybe 
it isn’t. Not as romantic as you think. Perhaps 
the tattooing is put on with a stencil and a brush,” 
and Bobby giggled. 

“Never mind,” Norma Guerin said. “Sally 
evidently thinks a great deal of her Ben Mike. 
I’m curious to see him.” 

They started on again for the boathouse after 
Sally had passed with the zebra and, arriving 
there, were soon out in the six canoes—two in 
each craft. Betty and Bob were together, and at 
the start Bob spread the two leg-o’-mutton sails, 
for there was a good breeze. Betty tended the 
forward sheet and Bob looked after the other 
and steered with a broad-bladed paddle. They 
scooted across the cove towards Rocky Island and 
Tvere far ahead of the rest of the club. 

“I’d like to see the other side of that island,” 
Betty said, curiously eying the heaped-up rocks 
with the gaunt structure on the summit that had 
once held an iron cage for firewood. 

“Not in this canoe to-day,” Bob put in quickly. 
“Did you hear what the boatkeeper said? Likely 


THE BUNGALOW CANOE CLUB 


79 

to be squalls any time. We can’t go outside the 
cove.” 

“Oh, I suppose we must obey him,” said Betty. 

“Better,” rejoined her friend, with a grin. 
“Uncle Dick has accepted our word. As mem¬ 
bers in good standing of the Bungalow Canoe 
Club-” 

“Oh!” interrupted Betty, “there is one of those 
things. They don’t have to trouble about squally 
weather. They are far above that.” 

The seaplane to which she pointed hung in the 
air like a bird on its pinions. Bob squinted up 
at it. 

“Can’t see whether that is the SX-43 or some 
other. Cracky! See that!” 

“Why! It turned right around. How reck¬ 
less!” 

“Gee! I’d like to try that,” cried Bob Hen¬ 
derson. 

“You wouldn’t either! You say that just to 
make me—make me scared.” 

“Shucks, Betty! How can I make you afraid 
when I’m down here and the plane is up there?” 
the boy demanded. “Whoo! Do you see that?” 

“Oh!” gasped Betty Gordon. “He’s falling! 
He’ll be killed! Look!” 

“Drop your sail!” commanded Bob, quickly. 
“Loose the sheet. His own was being payed off 



So BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

swiftly, and the tri-cornered sail came down 
with a swish. Betty’s followed. 

“We can’t watch that and sail this canoe— 
that’s sure!” 

“He is falling, Bob!” wailed Betty, her head 
tipped far back to follow the gyrations of the 
plane. 

“He’s spiraling,” said Bob. “See! He must 
have some control of the machine, after all.” 

“But he’s going to land smash into the water, 
Bob.” 

“That must be softer than landing on the land. 
Suppose he hit the island-” 

“Bob!” shrieked the girl. “He is going to 
hit us!” 

“Nonsense!” 

“He is! He is! Or, if he doesn’t hit us di¬ 
rectly he will capsize us. Oh, Bob!” 



CHAPTER X 


THE DANCE AT THE CAMPEACHIE 

There was good reason for Betty’s terror. 
The shadow of the descending seaplane was fairly 
upon the canoe. Nor was there time to seize the 
paddles and get away from the point of danger, 
smothered as the light craft was in the sails. 

None of the other canoes were near, nor any 
other craft. But Betty could hear the other girls 
screaming and the boys shouting warnings to Bob 
to get out of the way. 

“Cracky, Betsey! we’re in for it,” exclaimed 
poor Bob. “Uncle Dick will blame me for this.” 

Betty did not see how he could be blamed at 
all. But there was no time for any response on 
her part. 

The engine of the great plane had died; but the 
rush of its descent was almost deafening. It was 
a terrible thing to sit there undei that shadow and 
realize that nothing they could do would save 
them. 

She understood that the pilot of the plane could 

81 


82 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

do nothing to help himself or them. Down, down 
the machine rushed, and in another thirty seconds 
the canoe must be overwhelmed. 

But suddenly and at seemingly the very last 
moment, the nose of the spinning plane canted up, 
and the great machine swerved. The next moment 
it took the water with an enormous splash and the 
end of the right wing passed over their heads. 

“Low bridge!” yelled Bob, and they both threw 
themselves forward, while more than a bucket of 
water splashed over the side of the canoe. 

It was a miracle that the canoe was not swamped. 
It was a wonder, too, that the wing had not col¬ 
lided with the two short masts to which the sails 
were bent. The waves caused by the landing of 
the plane tossed the canoe like a chip; but Bob, 
seizing the dipper from its beckets, bailed like 
mad. 

“Oh, Bob! Oh, Bob!” cried Betty. 

“We’re not drowned yet,” shouted the boy in 
return. “Whew I what a drop that was. I wonder 
how it feels to come down in a plane like that.” 

“I think you must be crazy!” gasped Betty. 

“Grab your paddle and push ahead,” com¬ 
manded her companion, his face very red now, 
but his eyes dancing with excitement. “Say! this 
is some adventure.” 

In a minute or two he seized his own paddle 
and they got the canoe away from the more turbu- 


THE DANCE AT THE CAMPEACHIE 83 

lent water. By this time they could see the pilot 
and the mechanician with him. The former tore 
off his hood and goggles and turned in his seat to 
look at the canoe. 

“I say!” he shouted, grinning, “do you want 
all the road? That was a close call, do you 
know?” 

“I think he is hateful!” ejaculated Betty, but 
the pilot did not hear her. 

The other canoes were being paddled furiously 
toward the scene; but Bob worked their own craft 
nearer to the nose of the plane, and spoke to the 
pilot before the rest of the party arrived. 

“When you had the whole cove to fall into, you 
might have given us a little more leeway, don’t 
you think?” he said, answering the grin of the 
pilot. 

“You are a pretty brave pair,” said the man. 
“Sorry I scared the young lady. Something’s 
gone wrong with my engine.” The mechanician 
was already at work on it. “I really couldn’t do 
better than I did. But if you two will come over 
to the station any day, I’ll take you up and show 
you that I usually do better than this. It sha’n’t 
cost you a cent.” 

“I wouldn’t go up for worlds!” gasped Betty. 

“Haven’t any worlds to give away, Miss,” 
laughed the pilot, and then introduced himself as 
Captain Winkler. “I really was not reckless. It 


84 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

was an accident. If you think I am reckless, you 
should watch Jasper Heddick in the SX-43. He’s 
the reckless one.” 

“We saw the SX-43 as close as we wanted to 
yesterday,” Betty said seriously. “He came near 
knocking our train off the rails. I think flying is 
an awful business!” 

“So you won’t come over and try it with me?” 
Captain Winkler asked, still much amused. 

“I will,” Bob declared. “I’m crazy to go up.” 

“You certainly are,” murmured Betty. 

“It is a bargain, young fellow,” said the captain. 
“How about it, Joe? All right again?” 

His companion said it was, and the captain 
arranged his head-gear, waved his hand, and the 
engine began to thrum. The plane started toward 
Rocky Island, took the air again about two hun¬ 
dred yards away, and skimmed upward, barely 
clearing, it seemed, the summit of the island, and 
rushed out to sea. 

The other canoeists arrived in great excitement, 
and for a time Betty could scarcely answer their 
inquiries. The other boys were as enthusiastic as 
Bob, and when they learned that the latter had 
been invited to take a ride with the flying man at 
some later date, they could only feel envy. 

Betty got over her fright after a time. But she 
insisted that they go home at once. She would 
not hear of canoeing any more that day. 


THE DANCE AT THE CAMPEACHIE 85 

“I like excitement as well as the next one,” she 
told Bobby. “But enough is as good as a feast.” 

So they spent the afternoon on the boardwalk. 
In the first place they hired three chairs for the 
girls and three for the boys and were wheeled to 
and fro for an hour. But after having seen what 
there was to see in this way they all craved action 
and began to dip into the more exciting amuse¬ 
ments of the place. 

There was a fine ride, where one went through 
a tunnel with real water under the boat and then 
shot up and over a great framework that brought 
the boat around finally to the starting point. They 
had a couple of rounds of this and then went out 
on the steel pier where the crowd was, and ate 
ice-cream while listening to the band. 

“To-morrow we will begin our bathing, but 
we’ll take it in the morning or soon after lunch, 
for there is so much going on here on the pier 
and the boardwalk that we don’t want to miss 
the fun,” Betty planned. “Isn’t that right?” 

“You make the plans, Betty. You’re always so 
good at that,” Bobby agreed. “We’ll do just 
what you say.” 

The others were quite satisfied too; but Tommy 
Tucker wanted to know when they would go to 
that circus. 

“For I want to see that Ben Mike that the girl 
in the satin dress thinks so much of,” he grinned. 


86 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“Do you suppose they will let us feed the living 
skeleton?’* 

“You bad boy!” exclaimed Bobby, laughing. 
“Do you think it is a menagerie, and that you can 
poke peanuts and popcorn into his cage? If we 
take you to that Curio Cabinet you and Ted had 
better behave.” 

They did not visit the show that evening. When 
they returned to the bungalow Mr. Gordon met 
them with news that was most agreeable. 

“Blacks and pumps, boys, for this evening. 
And you girls put on your best bibs and tuckers,” 
he said gaily. 

“As long as they are not the Tucker twins we 
must wear, I’ll forgive that word,” said Bobby. 

“What is it, Uncle Dick?” cried Betty. “A 
party?” 

“Sort of. There is a dance for charity at the 
Hotel Campeachie, the biggest hotel here. I have 
bought tickets for us all, including Miss Anderson 
and myself. And two big cars will come for us, 
for I know that you girlies won’t want to get your 
dancing shoes wet.” 

“Isn’t he a dear?” said Norma Guerin, as the 
girls trooped up to dress after dinner. “Your 
Uncle Dick, Betty, knows just how to treat young 
ladies. I feel really grown up.” 

“He is the best uncle that ever was,” announced 


THE DANCE AT THE CAMPEACHIE 87 

Betty, with pride. “I am sure there never was 
such another.” 

The Campeachie was at the southern end of 
the boardwalk and there was a great ballroom. 
The crowd and the lights and the band delighted 
Betty and her friends. 

The twins did not neglect to dance with the 
girls, and Bob and Gil Lane found some other 
nice boys of about their own age and introduced 
them to Miss Anderson, who insisted on knowing 
every partner her girls had. 

Naturally in a mixed assembly like this some 
care must be exercised in choosing new acquaint¬ 
ances. Betty might have had a different partner 
for each number on the program; but she was a 
girl who had some choice herself in the selection 
of people to talk with. She noticed several men in 
khaki on the floor and thought at first that they 
were soldiers; but when Bob brought one of them 
to her she recognized Captain Winkler, the air¬ 
man, who had given her such a fright that 
morning. 

“He’s met Uncle Dick,” explained Bob, quite 
excited, “and he wants to apologize for scaring 
you so, Betsey. Just think!” he added, “Captain 
Winkler was in France and belonged to the Lafay¬ 
ette Corps before we got into the war, and is an 
ace, mind you.” 

“I should think,” Betty said, looking into Cap- 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


tain Winkler’s smiling face with some doubt, “that 
after that you would never want to see a flying 
machine again.” 

“But, you see, when the war was over flying was 
the only thing I could do. I left college to learn 
it. And I am too old to go back to school. So I 
went to work for the Atlantic Aviation Corpora¬ 
tion, who can make use of us flying men. May I 
have the pleasure?” 

There was something very nice in having so old 
and gallant a man dance with her. Betty admitted 
it to herself. And the air pilot danced beautifully. 
But she did not think she could ever really forgive 
him for frightening her so! 

As he led her to Miss Anderson afterward, they 
passed a knot of other flying men near the door. 
One turned and glanced in Betty’s direction, but 
with no recognition in his expression. The girl 
stopped, troubled. 

“Who is that?” she asked of Captain Winkler. 

“Oh, that fellow? He’s one of us. I mentioned 
him this morning. He and his mate, Nick Olmer, 
have just recently been taken on. He is Jasp 
Heddick and drives the SX-43.” 

“‘Jasp’? ‘Jasp’?” murmured Betty, in much 
trepidation. “Why, I have seen him before 1 ” 


CHAPTER XI 


A MOMENT OF PERIL 

Captain Winkler did not notice Betty’s sur¬ 
prise and agitation when she saw the face of the 
pilot of the SX-43. He laughingly told her: 

“He is a daring bird, that Jasper Heddick, be¬ 
lieve me! He and his mechanician would slice the 
icing off a chocolate layer cake, he flies so close to 
trouble. I promise to be careful when I take your 
friend, Bob, up in my machine.” 

“I wish Bob wasn’t so crazy to go with you,” 
murmured Betty. 

She continued to look back at Heddick, whose 
face she very clearly remembered as that of one 
of the motor-car thieves she had seen on Stoneville 
Hill several weeks before. She was confident of 
her identification. He was one of the men who 
had stolen Mr. Phineas Cutler’s automobile. 

She wondered if the mechanician Captain 
Winkler spoke of was the other thief. And should 
she speak right out here and now and reveal what 
she knew about the fellow with the very unpleas¬ 
ant face? 

89 


9Q 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


Betty Gordon had felt considerable fear of the 
two rascals when she had first seen them. She 
and her girl friends had made up their minds that 
the fellows were dangerous. Besides, Sally Cut¬ 
ler’s story had borne this feeling out. Although 
Betty was not usually a coward, she was just a 
little afraid of what Jasper Heddick might do if 
she publicly accused him. Had her uncle or Bob 
been by she would have had more courage. 

Nor could she tell Captain Winkler of her 
trouble and suspicion. After all, she should have 
proof of her accusation. She wondered if the 
other girls would remember the man’s face? If 
they did not, Sally Cutler, Betty was confident, 
would remember him. 

So she thanked Captain Winkler for his atten¬ 
tions and returned to Miss Anderson’s side, where 
she remained throughout the next dance, thinking 
the situation over. The more she thought of it, 
the more serious it seemed in Betty’s judgment. 

If Jasper Heddick and his mate were work¬ 
ing for the Atlantic Aviation Corporation, she 
doubted if they were trustworthy employees of the 
concern. If they had stolen an automobile, why 
wouldn’t they steal a seaplane? 

“Only, I don’t see what they could do with one 
if they stole it,” Betty thought. “Surely they 
could not sell such a thing without being imme¬ 
diately apprehended. Why,” and she was in- 


A MOMENT OF PERIL 


9i 

dined to giggle at the thought, “a hydroplane on 
one’s hands would be as much trouble as that 
elephant Mr. Silas Cutler was bothered with.” 

However, her suspicions—indeed, her certainty 
of the fellow’s identity—did not cause Betty much 
amusement. She was excited and continued to feel 
a little frightened. The longer she considered the 
matter, however, the more she was sure that she 
had better keep it secret until positive of her 
proofs that this pilot of SX-43 was the automobile 
thief. 

“He cannot really do much harm with that 
plane,” she decided. “I will wait until the other 
girls see him, and especially Sally Cutler. She 
will surely know again those men who tried to 
cheat her father before they stole her uncle’s car.” 

Having come to this determination she tried 
several times during the evening to show Jasper 
Heddick’s face to one or another of her girl 
friends. But each time the fellow slipped away 
or other dancers got between them. 

“Who do you mean, Betty?” Bobby demanded, 
quite exasperated. “There are so many of those 
airmen here I can’t tell one from another. And 
why do you suppose I have ever before seen the 
man you mean?” 

But Betty did not want to tell her that. She 
wanted Heddick’s face to appear before her chum 
just as unexpectedly as it had before her own 


92 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


vision. If Betty told Bobby who he was, the latter 
could identify him all too easily. It was a serious 
crime of which Betty secretly accused the man, 
and no mistake must be made in corroborating her 
own belief. 

She would wait for Sally Cutler to see him. 

The fellow disappeared from the ballroom 
early. Nor did Betty Gordon allow her surprising 
discovery to spoil her good time at the Cam- 
peachie. She and her girl friends had seldom 
received more attention in their lives than on 
this occasion. Wearing pretty frocks, dancing to 
lovely music, and with “perfectly splendid part¬ 
ners,” to quote Bobby, the six felt that they had 
arrived at the heights of bliss. 

Mr. Gordon danced once with each of the girls, 
nor did he neglect Miss Anderson. Naturally 
the Shadyside physical instructor was a graceful 
woman and danced well. Betty declared that the 
teacher and Uncle Dick made the most attractive 
couple on the floor. 

The party from the bungalow remained until 
midnight, and then went home in taxis like real 
“grown-ups.” The girls at least could scarcely 
go to sleep, they were so excited. And Betty, after 
the others were quiet, found that she had too 
much to think of to find rest in what Bobby 
jokingly called “the arms of Murphy.” 

Being a particularly healthy girl, Betty was not 


A MOMENT OF PERIL 


93 

used to lying awake. She fidgeted and tossed, but 
tried to keep quiet for fear of waking Bobby in 
the other bed. Then she grew thirsty, and there 
was no water in the carafe on the stand. It 
seemed to her as though she must have a drink. 

So she slipped out of bed, shrugged on her robe 
and put her feet into her bedroom slippers. She 
needed no light, for there was a moon. She meant 
to go to the bathroom on that floor and get a 
drink of water. 

Without making any noise she opened the door 
and silently passed into the hall. There was a 
window at either end of the hall, and although 
the middle of the passage was in shadow, the 
moon radiated sufficient light through these win¬ 
dows to satisfy Betty’s needs. 

But when she returned from the bathroom, 
having drunk a glass of water, she was halted by 
a movement in the shadow at the head of the 
stairs. She did not cry out, but for a moment she 
could not move! 

There was somebody there! Who or what it 
was she could not at first imagine. Then, perhaps 
because of her previous thoughts of the automo¬ 
bile thieves, the suggestion came to her that a 
robber had entered the house! 

The incidents of the evening had made her 
nervous. Suppose this was an armed burglar, and 
he had spied her from the place where she had 
seen his movements in the dusk? The thought 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


94 

might have frightened the bravest person in the 
world. 

She believed herself to be in peril. For all she 
knew a great pistol in the hand of the marauder 
was aimed at her breast. This chilling thought so 
struck the power from the girl’s limbs that she 
almost sank to the floor, too alarmed to take 
another step and powerless to speak a word. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS 

Bobby Littell would have called it “a scarce- 
ful moment,” and that ghostly movement in the 
deep shadow at the top of the stair chilled Betty 
to her finger-tips. 

Then, luckily, before she could scream or run 
away, she realized that the figure was going away 
from her instead of approaching her. It had 
begun to descend the stair. 

Thus encouraged, but with violently beating 
heart, Betty crept toward the stairs and peered 
over the banisters. A faint band of moonlight 
entered through the stair window, and through 
this band of silver the figure passed. It now 
seemed even more ghostly, for Betty thought she 
could see the moon’s ray pass right through the 
descending form . 

This, however, was an illusion. The darker 
figure, seemingly with flowing robes about it, went 
on and reached the bottom of the flight. Then as 
it turned toward the rear of the house Betty sud¬ 
denly realized who and what it was. 

95 


96 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“Libbie!” she murmured, feeling almost faint 
with relief. “She’s walking in her sleep again. 
Some time that girl will be the death of me 1 ” 

She did not want to wake Libbie suddenly. 
Libbie’s aunt at Fairfields had warned all the 
girls against doing that. And, truly, while they 
were at school the plump girl had given very little 
trouble in this way. Her aunt had been sure that 
her somnambulistic feats would gradually wear 
off. 

But there she was, thought Betty, at her old 
tricks! The girl ran hastily down the stairs to 
overtake Libbie. And as she reached the bottom 
there was a sudden “swish!” behind her and a 
whisper reached her ear: 

“Look out from under!” 

Betty knew Bob Henderson’s voice too well to 
be much startled by it. She glanced up to see him 
gliding down the banister, astride, in pajamas and 
bathrobe. 

“Bob! What are you doing here?” 

“Heard a door creak. Poked my head out of 
our room. Saw two ghosts. Followed to the 
head of the stairs. What’s on the docket? I bet 
you girls are hiding something from us poor chaps. 
What is up, Betsey?” 

“That is Libbie,” whispered his girl chum. 
“She’s walking in her sleep.” 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS 


97 

“Get out! She had her eyes open when she 
passed my door.” 

“But, Bob, she must be sleep walking! What 
else should she be doing out of her bed at this 
time of night?” 

“What are you out for?” he chuckled. 

“I couldn’t sleep and went for a drink of 
water.” 

“Gee!” gasped Bob. “Libbie’s going to the 
kitchen. Bet she’s after something more substan¬ 
tial than a drink of water.” 

Bob led the way to the pantry from which they 
could watch the figure of the plump girl wandering 
about the big white enameled kitchen. She opened 
the doors of the icebox and looked within, and 
Bob squeezed Betty’s hand and chuckled. Then 
she approached the safe in the coolest corner of 
the kitchen, opened a lower door, peered into it, 
and finally squatted down on the floor, Turkish 
fashion, and reached in for what she wanted. 
Betty and Bob then came out of hiding. 

“Well, Libbie Littell!” exclaimed Betty. 

“Is that you, Betty?” asked Libbie, with her 
mouth full. “This delicious lemon meringue pie! 
They asked me to have a second piece at dinner, 
and I couldn’t eat it. But when I woke up and 
thought of it—well! I couldn’t resist the tempta¬ 
tion. Have some?” 

Bob burst into laughter, but smothered it with a 


98 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

regard to the sleepers in the house. Betty was a 
little inclined to scold. 

“You are bad* enough, Libbie,” she said, “when 
you walk in your sleep.” 

“I don’t!” 

“Well, you used to. And I thought you were at 
it again.” 

“I never was wider awake,” declared the hun¬ 
gry girl. 

“But before I recognized your sylph-like form,” 
said Betty, her good-nature returning, “I was sure 
you were a burglar.” 

“A burglar!” squealed Libbie. 

“Hush! Yes. I got to thinking if that man 
should come here-” 

“Betty! Who are you talking about?” Bob 
demanded curiously. 

“Why—er—Bob! Libbie! Who do you sup¬ 
pose I saw at the dance last evening?” 

“Why, ’most everybody that is anybody at 
Ocean Park,” said Libbie reflectively, nibbling a 
bit of flaky crust. 

“So they say,” drawled Bob. “Who was the 
particular person you mean, Betty?” 

“One of those awful men who stole Sally’s 
uncle’s automobile,” said Betty seriously. “Don’t 
laugh, Bob. It was the one we girls heard called 
Jasp. You remember, Libbie?” 

“I don’t remember what he was called. And 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS 


99 

I wouldn’t know him again if I met him in 
church,” declared the plump girl confidently. 

“You won’t be likely to meet him there,” said 
Betty, with some warmth. 

“Cracky, Betty!” cried Bob, “are you sure of 
this?” 

“Hush! Don’t wake up the house. Yes, Bob, 
and I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it.” She 
proceeded to recount the incident at the dance, 
revealing how Captain Winkler had pointed out 
the pilot of the SX-43 to her. “And he is that 
Jasp who was one of the automobile thieves— 
Jasper Heddick. I am sure of it, Bob.” 

“Who else saw him?” asked the boy practically. 

“I did not know what to do. He went away 
before I could make up my mind. And, anyway, 
you couldn’t identify him. Nor would Uncle 
Dick.” 

“And Libbie says she can’t,” remarked the boy. 
“Perhaps the other girls would not know him 
again. Are you sure, Betty?” 

“I could never make a mistake about that hor¬ 
rid fellow,” she declared. 

Bob began to chuckle again. “You made a 
mistake about the car. Remember how that Dr. 
Bennett and his friend looked when the sheriff 
ran them down?” 

“Oh, don’t talk!” exclaimed Betty. “I was 


IOO 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


right then about the license number. You know I 
was, Bob Henderson.” 

“Well, that’s all right. Don’t get sore, Betty. 
What we want to do is to look this seaplane pilot 
up and make sure.” 

“And you would better be careful,’^said Libbie 
placidly, while she inelegantly licked the last 
crumb of the pie from her fingers. “It’s wicked to 
accuse anybody of anything when they didn’t do 
it. Look at your saying I was walking in my 
sleep.” 

“Humph!” ejaculated Betty, with some sharp¬ 
ness. “If you eat any more you won’t be able to 
walk at all to-morrow. Come on up to bed.” 

“ ‘The feast of the hobgoblins,’ ” chuckled Bob, 
wiping his own mouth. “Better have a piece of 
cake, Betty. It’s scrumptious.” 

“I’d never get to sleep at all if I ate like you 
two,” declared Betty. 

“Believe me,” replied Bob, rising, “more people 
are kept awake by empty stomachs than by guilty 
consciences.” 

“How many stomachs have you got, Bob ? Are 
you a camel?” Betty asked, as she led Libbie away. 

The next morning Betty and Bob had a con¬ 
ference with Mr. Gordon about the pilot of the 
SX-43, and he, too, seemed to consider that Betty 
might be mistaken in her identification of the man. 

“He is engaged by the Atlantic Navigation 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS ioi 

Corporation in a responsible situation,” said Mr. 
Gordon, “and it would never do to make a mis¬ 
take. You can see that, of course, Betty?” 

“But I am sure, Uncle Dick!” cried the girl. 

“And yet you have nobody to corroborate your 
opinion.” 

“Bobby says she is sure she would know him. 
And the other girls-” 

“I don’t see but we will have to wait until the 
girls do see and recognize him before we can make 
any move,” her uncle said decidedly. 

“When I go over for my ride with Captain 
Winkler I’ll look those fellows up and try to 
learn more about them,” put in Bob. 

“Oh, Bob! you don’t mean to take a sail in that 
airship, do you? Uncle Dick, don’t let him,” 
begged Betty. 

“Why, Betty, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t like 
to try it myself,” her uncle answered, laughing at 
her. 

“Dear me! you are as big a boy as Bob is,” 
cried Betty, but not saucily. 

“Anyway, Bob shall go if he wants to,” said 
Mr. Gordon, smiling. “And if he sees this Jasper 
Heddick and his mate I hope he will observe them 
narrowly and get a good description of them. 
Then we will see.” 

“Oh, dear!” sighed Betty, for she was not at all 
pleased by her uncle’s decision at this time. 



102 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


However, there was so much to take up the 
minds of the young folks at the bungalow, so much 
fun in prospect, that Betty could not long be cast 
down. They had agreed to go surf bathing that 
morning, and the bungalow not being very far 
from one of the beaches, they dressed in their 
bathing suits at the house and walked down to 
the shore covered by their raincoats. 

It was a perfectly safe beach; but there were 
guards, and ropes staked out at either end of the 
beach, and two big rafts anchored a little way off 
shore. There were many small bathhouses too; 
and Betty and her friends had scarcely arrived 
and checked their coats with a caretaker when 
who should appear from one of these bathhouses 
but Sally Cutler. 

When the girls sighted her they giggled. They 
were all interested in the girl from Stoneville, and 
there was no unkindness in their hearts, but Sally 
did have such atrocious taste in dress! 

“That bathing suit is a scream!” gasped Bobby 
Littell. “Did you ever see one like it, Betty?” 

“Such frills and furbelows,” observed Louise. 
“I don’t believe it was ever made to go into the 
water. It is just a freak.” 

“It is home made,” Alice Guerin announced. 
“And perhaps it was made by the freaks she tells 
us of—the fat lady and the bearded lady.” 

“It’s funny,” admitted Betty. “But I wouldn’t 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS 


103 

have Sally's feelings hurt. You speak to the boys 
and make them behave, Louise, that's a dear,” 
and she ran over to meet Sally. 

“Oh, Betty!” Sally cried. “I’m mighty glad to 
see you folks here. I hoped you would be around 
this morning. I've got my new bathing suit. We 
just finished it after the last show last night. Ben 
Michaels says it is stunning.” 

“It certainly is,” admitted Betty, in all serious¬ 
ness. 

“I hope so. It cost enough,” said Sally, preen¬ 
ing. “And Ben is here.” 

“The tattooed boy?” asked Betty. 

“Yes. He wanted to have a regular boughten 
bathing suit like those your boy friends have got 
on. But you know, that wouldn’t do. It would 
spoil his value to the show. So his mother made 
him one. Here he comes now.” 

The door of a bathhouse opened and there 
stepped forth a well built boy with a round, brown 
face and a smile that really made the face attrac¬ 
tive, although Betty did not think that he looked 
very intelligent. However, it was his dress, too, 
that attracted the most attention. 

Instead of the usual trunks he wore black tights 
down to his ankles. Below them Betty could see a 
pattern of red and blue marks like an anklet. His 
wrists were marked in the same way, but the 
sleeves of his jersey came to his wrists and it was 


104 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


so high in the neck that very little of the pattern 
of tattooing showed up there. 

“Mrs. Michaels didn’t want him to go bath¬ 
ing,” whispered Sally. “But I begged so that she 
had to let him. Isn’t he a nice boy?” 

“He certainly is,” agreed Betty warmly. “Do 
introduce me.” 

Sally was proud to do this. Ben was a bashful 
boy, and although he must have been several years 
the senior of the boys in Betty’s party, he seemed 
so simple and modest that Bob Henderson and the 
other Salsette boys were much more at ease than 
was the young fellow from the show. 

They were all reasonably well acquainted very 
soon and dashed into the water together. When 
Sally’s suit got wet it seemed to shrivel up and 
clung to her thin frame in a most astonishing way. 
Betty and Louise managed to make the boys be¬ 
have pretty well, however; and if they were more 
hilarious than they might otherwise have been, 
neither Sally nor her friend guessed what made 
the party so gay. Betty resolved to say nothing 
to Sally for the time being about the aviator, 
Jasper Heddick. Uncle Dick’s words had cast a 
little doubt into her mind, now that the spell of 
the man’s presence was removed. 

They could all swim, even Sally. The tattooed 
boy was a very strong swimmer, and when they 
raced to the nearest raft he was the first to climb 


THE FEAST OF THE HOBGOBLINS 


105 

aboard it. And he dragged Sally along with him. 

Somebody had to look out for Timothy Derby, 
too; for without his spectacles Timothy was rather 
helpless. Libbie did not leave him, for if she 
did, Tommy Tucker said, Tim might be swimming 
around in circles all the morning, unable to spy the 
raft. 

They all spied something soon after beginning 
their play about the raft, however, which was 
startling. The life-saver who was supposed to 
row about in a boat just beyond the rafts had gone 
inshore for something. The sea was quite calm 
in fact, and who would expect trouble of any kind 
on such a quiet day? 

But Bobby suddenly screamed as she poised, 
ready for a dive seaward from the raft. Her cry 
was plainly one of fear, and instead of diving 
properly she splashed clumsily into the water close 
to the raft. 

“What did she say?” demanded Betty, who 
was in the water some ten yards outside the raft. 

Ben Michaels was nearest to her, with Sally 
clinging to his hand. They were all three tread¬ 
ing water. 

“She seen something back of us,” Sally de¬ 
clared, trying to look behind. “Must be some¬ 
thing— Oh, my gracious! What is that?” 

Bobby bobbed up just then, grabbed the edge of 
the raft, and managed to repeat her cry: 


I0 6 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“A shark! A shark! Oh, do come in, Betty, 
or he’ll get you, sure!” 

Betty Gordon twisted around where she was in 
the water, while Ben and Sally struck out for 
safety. Betty saw something—a blue and white 
body of seemingly enormous size, and to all ap¬ 
pearances it was bearing down upon her from the 
open sea. Shark or not, it was some marine mon¬ 
ster, and Betty was quite as terrified by its ap¬ 
pearance as Bobby had been. 


CHAPTER XIII 


NOT FAST COLORS 

The tattooed boy made sure of Sally’s safety, 
and paid very little attention to anything else. It 
was true that the farm girl could not swim very 
well; but afterward Betty considered that he 
might have shown some interest in Betty’s own 
safety, as she was almost within reach of his hand 
when Bobby uttered her despairing cry of 
“Shark!” 

Betty was confused and frightened by her first 
glimpse of the monster bounding over rather than 
through the waves. It came on with a good deal 
of the motion of a galloping horse. But Betty 
had never thought a shark was so round and 
clumsy-looking. 

She sank under the surface, feeling quite help¬ 
less but knowing enough to keep her mouth tight 
shut. When she bobbed up again with her ears 
ringing from the submersion, the great, fat, pig¬ 
like body of the sea monster was almost upon 
her. 

107 


108 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

Betty Gordon heard her mates shrieking, and 
she caught sight of a boat being pulled rapidly 
toward her. But it seemed to her that nobody 
could reach her in time to aid. The great teeth 
with which she knew a shark was armed must 
almost instantly snap upon her shrinking body. 
One snap, and all would be over! 

Then she suddenly discovered that the brute 
had no teeth. At least, it had no such wide mouth 
and horrid rows of fangs as those she expected to 
behold. 

Indeed, it had a snout-like head, and it came 
plunging on, rocking up and down like a small 
boat in a heavy sea, and if such a creature could 
be said to have a good-natured face, that was 
what this strange animal possessed. 

“Why,” thought Betty, although she could not 
say it aloud, “it can’t be a shark at all! What 
in the world is it?” 

A man was standing up in the small boat, one 
of the guards, while another rowed. The stand¬ 
ing man shouted to her: 

“Dive, Miss! The porpoise won’t hurt you 
unless it falls afoul of you by accident. Dive, I 
tell you!” 

Betty could not dive, but she let herself sink 
again and it felt to her as though she went down 
to a tremendous depth. At least, before she had 
come up again it seemed to her that she had re- 


NOT FAST COLORS 


X 09 

membered everything she had ever read about 
porpoises. 

The beast had gone on, passed the raft, and 
turned his head out to sea again when Betty arose 
beside the boat and the guard pulled her in. She 
was glad to get out of the water. The fright she 
had suffered had really weakened her for the time 
being. 

“That crazy fish has been fooling around this 
beach before,” said the guard. “He’s harmless, 
but he might bump into a swimmer and do some 
damage.” 

“It—it’s a cetacean,” gasped Betty, “like a dol¬ 
phin; and some people say it changes color when 
it dies. And they call it ‘the hog-fish’; and—and 
—oh, do take me to the raft!” 

“I guess you were scared, Miss,” said the 
guard, staring at her. 

“Who wouldn’t be? Oh! Here’s Bob.” 

Bob had come from the shore side of the raft 
just as soon as he could, and the Tucker twins and 
the other boys were close behind him. 

“Although what any of you could have done to 
beat off that big pig of a fish I don’t know,” Betty 
said, when she had got her breath and had re¬ 
gained her self-possession. “I am very much 
obliged to you,” she added to the guard. “But if 
it had been a shark you never could have saved 
me from him in the world.” 


no 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


This was a self-evident truth. The guard 
should not have left his station with the boat be¬ 
yond the raft until he was relieved. However, 
the young folks did not report him and during the 
rest of their bathing hour they dived shoreward 
from the raft and did not venture into the open 
sea beyond it. 

“Isn’t Ben brave?” Sally kept whispering into 
the cap-covered ears of the other girls whenever 
she got the chance. “I know I’d ’ve sunk right 
down and had to walk ashore if he hadn’t towed 
me in. Dear me, how scared I was. I’m ac¬ 
quainted with lots of show animals—zebrys and 
camels and elephants and them; but there wasn’t 
any shark in that Hannigan Circus that pop had 
left on his hands, and I wouldn’t know how to 
manage a shark.” 

“You’ve got nothing on us,” Bobby told her. 
“I guess your tattooed boy is all right. But he 
might have given Betty a hand, too.” 

“I should have sent Ben Michaels back after 
Betty just as soon as he got me to this raft if the 
guard hadn’t rowed out there.” 

“Humph!” muttered Bobby. “By that time 
poor Betty would have been inside the shark, if 
it had been a shark.” 

However, as the adventure turned out to be a 
sort of joke, there was a good deal of laughter 
over it in the end. 


NOT FAST COLORS 


III 


“And who’s afraid of a porpoise?” demanded 
Teddy Tucker. 

“I didn’t see you rushing out there to drive it 
off, Ted,” remarked W. M. Brown. 

“I went as quick as you did, all right,” retorted 
Ted. 

“I think you all did your best,” put in Betty. 
“Naturally, everybody was frightened.” 

Secretly she thought that Bob Henderson was 
the only boy who had shown much courage; but 
she was a peacemaker by nature and as the trouble 
was all over, why discuss it? 

That is, they thought all the trouble was over. 
But when the party went ashore to lie on the sand 
and sun themselves, the boys suddenly set up a 
mighty shout. They were all looking at and point¬ 
ing to Ben Michaels, Sally Cutler’s friend. 

“Look! Lookl” shouted Tommy Tucker. 
“What do you know about that!” 

“My eye!” yelled Ted. “The pattern’s come 
right through.” 

The others stared, and then there was not one 
of them save Sally who could refrain from laugh¬ 
ter. Ben Michael’s black tights and jersey had 
shrunk tightly to his limbs now that he was wet, 
and all up and down their length showed a faint 
scroll-work pattern of red and blue! 

“The colors aren’t fast!” gasped Bob, rolling 
on the sands in an almost breathless condition 


112 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


from laughter. “Look at him! Look at his feet, 
will you?” 

Ben turned a fiery red. But at that his face was 
no redder than his feet. The red ink ran more 
freely than the blue and one could imagine how 
wonderfully blotted the whole body of the “tat¬ 
tooed” boy must now be after his hour in the 
ocean. 

Unable to bear the laughter of the crowd he 
made for his bathhouse and disappeared. Sally, 
after showing a little vexation, took the matter 
quite philosophically. 

“Shucks! His mom will have to use the stencil 
and ink brush on him again. Course he ain’t 
really tattooed. You wouldn’t want him to be if 
you once saw him in his show trunks. And if 
’twas really pricked into his skin it would never 
come off. 

“But that ink Mrs. Michaels uses is supposed 
to be fast and needs a preparation she gets at the 
druggist’s to take it off. It’s a job to stencil that 
boy again, and I bet she won’t let him come in 
bathing a second time.” 

“Tell us honestly, Sally!” cried Bobby Littell. 
“Are the bearded lady’s whiskers glued on, or are 
they natural?” 

Sally grinned elfishly. “Well,” she admitted, 
“Mrs. Michaels don’t let the audience pull ’em! 
But she’s a real nice lady, ever so much nicer than 


NOT FAST COLORS 


113 

the fat woman. And don’t you think Ben’s an 
awful nice boy?” 

Whether they thought him so or not, the party 
from the bungalow agreed to attend Corwin’s 
Canine Circus and Cabinet of Curios that very 
evening. The occasion proved to be one long to 
be remembered by B&tty Gordon and her friends 
;and schoolmate^. 


CHAPTER XIV 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE 

The Bungalow Canoe Club made another 
cruise that afternoon, and this time the twelve 
young folks swarmed ashore on Rocky Island, 
which defended the' great cove from the open sea. 
It was much longer than it was wide, this island, 
and looked like a whale’s hump; only much too 
large for any whale that ever swam the sea. 

“Even Jonah’s great fish was nothing compared 
to this for size,” Bobby declared. “Do you sup¬ 
pose there are pirate caves, and all that, on this 
island, Betty?” 

“Shouldn’t be surprised,” replied her chum, 
with a laugh. “Only the pirates are all dead and 
gone long ago.” 

“Never mind. I’d like to see a cavern where 
pirates used to hide.” 

“You are as romantic as Libbie,” said Betty. 

“Only I haven’t her appetite,” chuckled Bobby 
wickedly. “Let’s go up and see the gallows.” 

“Bob says it only held an iron cage to burn 
wood in,” Louise observed. 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE 


115 

“Don’t tell me!” exclaimed her sister. “I don’t 
care for Bob’s information. He’s a spoil-sport, 
that’s what he is. They hung Captain Kidd, or 
somebody like him, in chains on this island, I 
am sure.” 

It was the general opinion that the island was 
an interesting, if rather barren, place. There 
were honeycombed places in the rocks at the sea’s 
edge, where each wave that rolled in spouted up 
like a geyser through the apertures from below 
and sprayed those who looked down the black 
shafts. They found some small, sand-bottomed 
caves, too, into which the sea ventured at high 
tide. And the fishing for bass off the inner shore 
of the island was wonderful. 

They carried home enough fish to supply the 
table at the bungalow for two meals. Some of 
them gathered mussels and netted a few shedder 
crabs, for they had come to the island supplied 
with what Bob Henderson called “the weapons of 
the chase.” They sailed back in ample time for 
dinner, sunburned, happy and tired. 

Not too tired, however, to remember their 
promise to Sally Cutler. Dinner revived them, 
and Mr. Gordon and Miss Anderson agreed to ac¬ 
company the young people to Corwin’s Canine 
Circus. Uncle Dick did not care to have them 
go about at night alone; at least until they were 
more familiar with Ocean Park. The resort, 


II6 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

however, was well policed, and as a whole the 
people that visited it, even for the day, were quiet 
and respectable. 

Too, Mr. Gordon and the Shadyside teacher 
desired to see the performing dogs quite as much 
as the younger folks wished to meet Sally Cutler’s 
friends in the side shows. Moreover, Betty and 
her friends had talked so much about Sally Cutler 
that Uncle Dick at least was curious about the girl 
from Stoneville. 

Sally was ensconced in the ticket cage, glorious 
in her gaily beaded frock, when the party arrived. 
She offered to pass the entire party of fourteen 
visitors into the show free of charge, for if she 
came of a thrifty race she was not mean. But 
Mr. Gordon would not hear of that. 

“No, Miss Sally,” he told her, having been in¬ 
troduced to the young ticket seller. “That would 
never do. You are here, I take it, to represent 
your father’s interests.” 

“Yes, sir. Pop thinks I can keep a sharp eye 
on things down here, and he comes over on Sun¬ 
days to examine the accounts.” 

“Then you must do your very best for him,” 
Mr. Gordon smilingly said, laying down a bill to 
pay for the tickets. “I hope he will do well in 
this venture.” 

“If we don’t have much rain it will be all right. 
And the freaks will get a stake for next winter. 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE 


II7 

Pop’s shrewd. He pays them according to the 
crowds they draw. If the weather is bad they 
mustn’t look to him for their money.” 

Standing near by was a black-browed man who 
was one of the Corwins. The other Corwin was 
a woman in white fleshings who put the dogs 
through their paces in the ring show. Sally called 
to the man to take her place in the ticket booth, 
and then led the way into the side show. 

Betty and her party had arrived early. By a 
private entrance Sally ushered them into the 
“freak tent,” which, however, was never called 
that in the hearing of the curiosities on exhibition. 
The fat lady, the extremely thin Romeo who 
courted her, the extremely pleasant-looking but 
rather startling lady with the black, bushy beard 
(was that beard natural?), Ben Michaels in 
spangled trunks and close fitting jersey, cut so as 
to reveal the wonderful scroll-work in red and 
blue that ornamented his body again, a pair of 
little folk—man and wife—whose voices were 
very squeaky and who, in their evening clothes, 
looked like a pair of French dolls, a bushy-haired 
Circassian girl (“Look!” gasped Bobby at first 
glimpse, “she’ll never need a permanent wave in 
that bunch of hair!”), and an “armless wonder” 
who did everything by using his toes that another 
man could do with his hands and fingers. 

There may have been some other “curios”; but 


Il8 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

naturally Betty and her friends were most inter¬ 
ested in the four performers who had been talked 
about so much by Sally Cutler. Perhaps the fat 
lady did not weigh more than half of the six hun¬ 
dred pounds that the sign over her head declared, 
but certainly she was the biggest woman the girls 
had ever seen. 

“Take care, Libbie!” whispered her wicked 
cousin, Bobby. “You’ll soon be like that.” 

“Sha’n’t!” ejaculated Libbie, not quite pleased. 
“I’m losing flesh.” 

“Yes,” said Bob on her other hand. “I notice 
that you’ve fallen away to a ton.” 

But the fat lady was very proud of her flesh. 
Just as the terribly bony skeleton was proud of his 
appearance. 

“Indeed,” Mr. Gordon remarked afterward, 
“it could be nothing but conceit that would urge 
these people to display their personal peculiarities 
for money.” 

“But I don’t know what other job that poor fat 
woman could take,” remarked Betty, “if she has 
to earn her living.” 

“How about Ben’s mother?” Bobby asked 
briskly. “She could shave, couldn’t she?” 

However, they all agreed that Sally’s peculiar 
friends had been very kind and pleasant to the 
visitors and all had insisted upon presenting each 
boy and girl with individual photographs of them- 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE 


119 

selves in costume. Mr. Gordon paid for these 
unobserved just the same! 

The dog circus was well worth the price of ad¬ 
mission. Madam Corwin evidently loved the ani¬ 
mals, and they seemed to do her bidding as 
though they liked the fun of it. Of course, there 
was a clown dog—a poodle—that appeared to be 
very stupid and unmanageable, but which at the 
end of the show leaped into Madam Corwin’s 
arms and was carried around the ring by her to 
bow and bark at the audience. He proved his af¬ 
fection for his mistress by licking her cheeks. 

The first evening show was over at last, and 
Betty and her party trooped out. Just as they 
came within hearing of the ticket cage they heard 
Sally Cutler’s shrill voice raised in anything but a 
pleasant manner. 

“You two scalawags! Come back here! I’ve a 
word to say to you! Come back!” 

Her voice rose to a high pitch as she proceeded, 
for evidently the “two scalawags” were not 
minded to accept her urgent command to return. 

“Oh, Bob!” cried Betty, who found Bob Hen¬ 
derson next to her in the crowd. “Oh Bob! Some¬ 
body must have got tickets from Sally without 
paying for them.” 

“Or passed a counterfeit bill on her,” suggested 
Bob, and he began to shoulder himself through the 
throng to the front of the ticket cage. 


120 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


Betty kept right along after him. Not many 
of her party realized what the trouble was about, 
and they hesitated to get into the milling crowd. 
Betty and Bob sighted Sally almost at once. Her 
face was very red and she was shaking a clenched 
fist behind the gilded bars of the cage and stand¬ 
ing up so that she could see over the heads of the 
people in front of her. 

“Bring ’em back!” she was shouting. “I’ll 
show ’em what’s what! The mean cheats! If my 
Uncle Phin ever catches sight of them two fellers 
he’ll horsewhip ’em well.” 

“Oh, Bob!” gasped Betty. 

“Bet it’s those two motor-car thieves,” declared 
Bob, quite as quick of comprehension as Betty 
herself. 

“That Jasp Heddick and his mate who fly the 
SX-43,” said Betty. Then shouted to Sally: 
“Who were they, Sally? Those fellows who stole 
your uncle’s car?” 

“Hullo, Betty,” said the excited ticket seller. 
“I believe that’s who they were. And I thought 
they was some kind of soldiers in uniform and was 
going to pass ’em in at half price. The scala¬ 
wags!” 

Of course, if the two men were Heddick and his 
mate, they were now far away. Uncle Dick came 
up and heard all about it. Sally could not stop 
selling tickets at this time; but she promised to 


CONVINCING EVIDENCE 


121 

come to the bungalow in the morning and describe 
to Mr. Gordon the appearance of both the young 
men she had just seen. 

“I will really have the matter looked into. We 
will get the constable to come and hear the de¬ 
scription of these fellows. If Sally’s story coin¬ 
cides with yours, Betty, the evidence may be 
strong enough to cause the local authorities to 
apprehend the men.” 

“Just think!” Bobby Littell cried, “we may be 
mixed up in a police case. Our Betty is a regular 
detective!” 

But Betty began to feel that the matter was too 
serious to joke about. 


CHAPTER XV 


A GLORIOUS FOURTH 

Sally Cutler ran over to Marigold Bunga¬ 
low in the morning, arriving before breakfast. 
She was still excited over the event of the evening 
before, yet she confessed now, upon reflection, to 
Mr. Gordon and the constable that she was not 
so positive as to the identity of the two men who 
had run away from the ticket booth of the circus. 

“Maybe they are and maybe they ain’t,” she 
sighed. “I’ve been thinking about that Jasper 
fellow. He used to have a mustache. He didn’t 
have one last night.” 

“Well, well, young woman,” said the constable, 
rather put out by this statement. “We must have 
direct evidence, or a direct accusation. I can’t go 
and arrest these fellows unless I have good foun¬ 
dation for my belief in their being thieves.” 

“We understand that, Mr. Pomfret,” said 
Uncle Dick, mildly. “But here is my niece-” 

“And she says the same,” interrupted the con¬ 
stable, rubbing his head with an evident hope of 
getting a new idea out of it. “She isn’t sure.” 


122 



A GLORIOUS FOURTH 


123 

“No-o,” confessed Betty. “I thought I was. 
But when I came to think it over-” 

“That’s just like me,” put in Sally. “I was 
thinking of it all night. Maybe they ain’t the 
fellows who stole Uncle Phin’s car. Then they’d 
have a case against us, wouldn’t they, Mister, if 
we arrested them?” she asked the constable. 

“You are a smart girl,” said Mr. Pomfret. 
“They might make me trouble anyway if I ar¬ 
rested them without just cause. If you folks will 
swear to a warrant, I will undertake to serve it. 
That is the best I can do.” 

“Uncle Dick, it might not be them,” said Betty. 

“I wish pop or Uncle Phin could take a look at 
’em,” muttered Sally. 

“When will your father be down here at Ocean 
Park again, Sally?” asked Mr. Gordon. “I un¬ 
derstand he comes once in a while.” 

“Pop will be here next Sunday if nothing worse 
happens to the old cow. She ate some wilted wild 
cherry leaves, and has been as sick as she could 
be. But she’ll be either dead or better; come 
Sunday.” 

“As the fellows accused had a personal inter¬ 
view with this girl’s father,” commented Pomfret, 
the constable, “I think we’d better wait for him to 
see the suspects. Meanwhile I will look up their 
record with the Atlantic Aviation Corporation. 



124 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


They could not have been taken on to ride one of 
those planes without references.” 

So it was decided to wait until Sally’s father 
came. As the two young men who later had 
stolen the automobile had first tried to pass a 
worthless check on Silas Cutler, the latter would 
remember them more clearly than his daughter, 
or than Betty and the other girls. 

“Anyhow,” said Sally, inclined to be disap¬ 
pointed, after the constable had gone away, “I 
told the watchmen about the circus to keep their 
eyes open for them fellers.” 

“That was quite right,” said Mr. Gordon. “If 
they are really the two thieves, they will know 
that you identified them, and they are not likley to 
appear openly about the boardwalk—in the day¬ 
time at least. But at night-” 

“They might steal some of Corwin’s dogs. 
They are valuable animals,” Sally said. 

“Suppose they stole the fat lady!” burst out 
Tommy Tucker. 

“Behave, Tommy!” commanded Bobby, but 
giggling at the idea. 

Mr. Gordon wrote down, at Sally’s dictation, 
a detailed description of the two automobile 
thieves whom they suspected to be Jasper Hed- 
dick, pilot of the SX-43, and Nick Olmer, his 
mechanician. He had already put on paper as 
clear a description as Betty had been able to give 



A GLORIOUS FOURTH 


125 

of Heddick. She did not remember so well the 
looks of the other man. 

“Now, Bob,” said Mr. Gordon, “when you go 
over to the hangar of the Atlantic Aviation Cor¬ 
poration, try to see these two men and memorize 
a description as well. We will compare the facts 
as we find them, and then, if Mr. Pomfret can 
make no move we will go over his head to the 
state or county police.” 

“Let us see, Bob—when are you going to visit 
your friend, Captain Winkler?” 

“The day after the Fourth,” replied Bob. “We 
fixed that at the dance. He is going to be mighty 
busy over the Fourth, so many new people come 
just for that day or the day before.” 

“Oh, dear me!” sighed Betty. She did not like 
to think of Bob’s going up with Captain Winkler. 

The thought of the Fourth of July, however, 
interested them all immediately. Ocean Park was 
going to have a civic celebration on the Fourth. 

“ ‘Safe and sane’ is all right enough; but how 
get up enthusiasm for our Revolutionary fore¬ 
bears if powder be not burned?” demanded Teddy 
Tucker. 

“I wonder,” proclaimed Tommy, “what 
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and— 
and Ethan Allen and—and General Lee, and 
Webster-” 

“Daniel or Noah, Tommy?” giggled Bobby, in- 



126 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

terrupting the twin’s passionate flow of oratory. 

“Noah? Nonsense! He built the Ark. I’m 
talking about our own Revolutionary War,” said 
Tommy. 

“The Noah Bobby means built the dictionary,” 
laughed Betty. 

“Never mind. Both the Ark and the diction¬ 
ary were awfully dry,” drawled Norma Guerin. 

“Well, what do you suppose even Noah would 
have said to celebrating the Fourth with pink 
lemonade and popcorn ? ^Why, my father used to 
have a cannon to fire on the Fourth.” 

“Yes,” said Ted, the other twin, “that’s how 
it comes that he has only three fingers on his left 
hand.” 

“And you boys want to blow off a leg or an arm 
or something!” cried Louise. “Mr. Gordon will 
not allow cannons or guns, I am sure.” 

“Shucks! You haven’t got to blow anything 
off,” explained Tommy. “Dad’s accident was just 
bad luck.” 

“What does it matter whether it was inten¬ 
tional or an accident?” asked Betty. “Fooling 
with fireams did it.” 

“Don’t always look on the black side of things,” 
drawled Tommy. “Why don’t you be little Sun¬ 
shine Spreaders?” 

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” added Ted 
with a grin. 


A GLORIOUS FOURTH 


127 

“You can’t prove that,” said Bobby, breaking in 
on this argument. “You don’t always see the 
other side of the cloud, so how can you be sure? 
Anyway, we may be able to spread sunshine with¬ 
out spreading blown-up boys all about the neigh¬ 
borhood. You’ll have to take it out in the public 
exhibition of fireworks if you want noise and ex¬ 
citement on the Fourth.” 

There was an ample program for both day and 
evening fireworks on the main beach and Betty 
Gordon’s crowd did not miss a thing when the 
great day came. There were “rocking-chair 
movies” on the beach, too. Uncle Dick secured 
tickets for everything the young people wished to 
see, and he and Miss Anderson must have tired 
themselves utterly in trying to keep up with what 
Bobby called “this wild bunch.” 

The twelve did, however, enjoy themselves so 
unmistakably in running hither and yon from one 
pleasure to another that Mr. Gordon and the 
Shadyside teacher must have been very grouchy 
indeed to have refused their attendance when it 
was necessary. 

But the Fourth was a very long day. It had 
begun at daybreak when the boys set off several 
bunches of firecrackers inside a length of sewer 
pipe behind the bungalow. The explosion was 
like that of a series of mines on the battle front. 
There was little sleep for anybody in the neigh- 


128 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


borhood of the bungalow after that hour unless 
he were stone deaf. 

A crowd of people came by train and motor-car 
to Ocean Park that day. The boardwalk had 
never been so thronged in the experience of Betty 
and her friends. They kept away from the Cor¬ 
win Circus and side-show, knowing well that Sally 
Cutler and the tattooed boy would be more than 
engaged from early morning until late at night. 

But they mingled with the crowds on the board¬ 
walk, listened to the bands, saw the dancing on 
the beach, and Uncle Dick of course got tickets 
for the “rocking-chair movies.” Before the hour 
appointed for that show, however, the evening 
fireworks were set off. Those who held tickets for 
the moving pictures were established in a very 
good situation to observe all the pieces of fire¬ 
works, both the set-pieces and the aerials. 

The young folks from Shadyside and Salsette 
trooped in upon the platform and secured their 
reserved seats in good season. It was not then 
dark. The edge of the boardwalk overhead was 
lined with the people who proposed to watch the 
fireworks free of cost. All the boats drifting just 
off shore, and there were hundreds of them, 
were filled with pleasure parties waiting for the 
exhibition. 

The band was playing upon the steel pier, and 
the railings from inshore to its outer end were 


A GLORIOUS FOURTH 


129 

likewise crowded with spectators. In the dining 
balcony the illuminated tables were filled with 
small parties, all laughing and chatting. 

Mr. Gordon’s charges had eaten dinner before 
they left the bungalow. Uncle Dick and Miss 
Anderson were on hand. The lights began to 
spark out in tiers and patches on the amusement 
towers and along the fronts of the hotels and of 
the big concessions. The serpentine rope of col¬ 
ored lights which twisted about the tower of the 
great carrousel on the boardwalk looked as 
though it were of living fire. 

“Just think! if the man who first discovered 
that electricity could be made useful only were 
able to be here to-night,” exclaimed Louise. 
“What a sight this is.” 

“Hush!” cried Bobby, in excitement. “There 
goes the first bomb.” 

“Why do you want us to hush?” giggled Betty, 
“I fail to understand. We haven’t come to hear, 
but to see—oh!” 

The bomb burst far up toward the starless sky. 
A sprinkle of colored stars blinked for a few sec¬ 
onds, floating down the airways. 

“How beautiful!” gasped Libbie. 

“Like a poem,” agreed Timothy Derby, who 
sat beside her. 

“Yes,” remarked Bobby, “just like: 


130 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star, 

How I wonder what you are V 

Sure! That certainly is some poem.” 

“Well,” chuckled Tommy Tucker, “even at 
that they made Timothy say it in school one time. 
I remember all about it.” 

“You remember a fat lot,” grumbled Timothy. 
“You’re only jealous because you can’t remember 
anything.” 

“You’ve got him there, Tim,” declared W. M. 
Brown. 

“Hush!” gasped Louise, marveling as did Lib- 
bie. “There’s another one.” 

There was a sputter and a swish, a glare of 
light on the beach, and another bomb, or rocket, 
started heavenward. It rose only a few yards, 
however, and exploded prematurely. The explo¬ 
sion was almost deafening, and from the aerial 
bomb a shower of stars and balls of fire shot in 
all directions that for half a minute lit up the 
whole neighborhood as though it were broad day. 

The next instant the “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” of 
the spectators developed into chorused screams of 
pain and fear. The fire-balls were exploding 
among the audience in the chairs and even among 
those people lining the edge of the boardwalk. 

Libbie and Louise screamed vociferously. Miss 
Anderson, practical as she was, cowered in her 


A GLORIOUS FOURTH 


131 

chair and put her hands over her eyes to shut out 
the white glare of the explosions. 

One of the fire-balls burst right over Betty Gor¬ 
don’s head. The sparks, white hot, if brief, sur¬ 
rounded the girl as though she had jumped into 
the middle of a bonfire. She heard Bob shrieking 
some command or warning to her; but for the 
moment she could not distinguish what he said 
through the jumble of other voices and the suc¬ 
cessive explosions of the aerial bomb. 


CHAPTER XVI 


AN EVENT OF MOMENT 

Bob Henderson chanced to be in a position 
where he could see better than the other members 
of his party just what was going on at the spot 
where the fireworks were being set off. The men 
in charge were practiced in their art and had taken 
all the precautions that seemed necessary. 

But the fault in this one bomb disturbed all 
their calculations. Bob saw the great set-piece on 
its frame that was to have been ignited after the 
first series of bombs, already afire in several 
places. The fuses were sputtering between the 
rockets affixed to the frame. The worst of it was 
that when these rockets were discharged they 
would endanger the whole neighborhood much 
more than did the single faulty bomb. 

For standing below the framework of the set- 
piece was the box in which the remainder of the 
first series of bombs lay. Another minute and the 
sparks from the rotating rockets on the frame 
would, without much doubt, set off all these bombs 
together! 


133 


AN EVENT OF MOMENT 


133 

“Down, Betty!” yelled the boy, first of all. 
That was the command Betty Gordon scarcely dis¬ 
tinguished. “Under the chairs, all of you! Look 
out!” 

Mr. Gordon had no more than sprung to his 
feet with the exploding stars hurtled about his 
head, when Bob bounded from the platform and 
raced toward the framework of the set-piece. As 
he ran he tore off his sweater, and, reaching the 
open box just as the fuses began to sputter, he 
flung the woolen garment over the bombs remain¬ 
ing in the box. 

“Out of the way, boy!” yelled one of the men. 
“You’ll be shot all to pieces!” 

“Give us a hand here,” cried Bob. “You and 
I can drag this box out of the way.” 

And they did. While the other employees of 
the fireworks company satisfied the spectators as 
best they could that the danger was over, the last 
star of the bomb having now exploded, the 
crippled set-piece gave off such color and form as 
to cause the throng along the boardwalk to utter 
choruses of “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” The exciting 
incident was over for them. But on the beach 
there were several people who had suffered slight 
burns and many others more than slight shock. 

“Where’s Timothy?” demanded Gilbert Lane, 
when they began “counting noses” in the party 
from the bungalow. 


134 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


^Where’s Libbie?” cried Louise. 

“Here we are,” responded the timid voice of 
the latter, and she crept out from under one chair 
and Timothy Derby “came up to breathe,” to 
quote the giggling Bobby, from under another. 

“I don’t care!” cried the plump girl, in some 
vexation, “didn’t Bob tell us to get down there?” 

“And you obeyed orders like a veteran,” said 
Uncle Dick, although he had to join the general 
laughter. “Where is that Bob Henderson?” 

Bob, rather crestfallen, joined them, and dis¬ 
played a big hole burned in his sweater. 

“That spark came pretty near setting off the 
box of bombs after all,” he said. “But I hate to 
ruin a perfectly good sweater.” 

“Bob,” said Uncle Dick warmly, “you are a 
trump!” 

“And the ace of trumps at that!” declared W. 
M. Brown. “I never saw such a fellow. Always 
doing the right thing at the right time.” 

“Yes,” grumbled Bob. “And losing a perfectly 
good sweater. I ought to have a leather medal, 
I ought.” 

Just the same it was sweet to be praised by his 
fellows for his self-possession and agility. Bob 
was not above some little conceit; otherwise he 
would not have been human. 

But he appreciated most Uncle Dick’s approval 
and the secret squeeze of the hand that Betty gave 


AN EVENT OF MOMENT 


135 

him. She was proud of him, too; and naturally 
Bob wanted always to please Betty. 

But the next morning, when he set out for the 
aviation station for his promised ride with Cap¬ 
tain Winkler, Betty’s approval did not attend his 
departure. He called her obstinate and would not 
admit that there was the least danger attending 
his venture. 

Many of the planes were in service that day, 
and all the morning, whenever they heard the 
drumming of the air motors, Betty refused even 
to look out of the window to see if it was “Bob’s 
plane” that was going over. The other girls and 
boys were continually on the watch, and when 
they finally shouted to her that Captain Winkler’s 
plane was in sight Betty still refused to look, but 
remained at her work. She was carefully mend¬ 
ing Bob’s burned sweater. 

“He hasn’t any right to risk his life and worry 
me so,” she said to Miss Anderson. “I don’t care 
if Uncle Dick did say he could go. Bob is the 
only brother I have, and I don’t know where I 
should find another if anything happened to him.” 

Miss Anderson laughed. But secretly she ad¬ 
mired the girl’s attitude toward her boy chum. 

Mr. Gordon had been called to the city by a 
telegram early that morning—an unexpected bit 
of business—and the whole crowd remained at 
home until Bob returned after lunch. 


136 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

He came back delighted with his ride through 
the air, but full of excitement regarding another 
matter. He had learned a good deal about Jas¬ 
per Heddick and Nick Olmer, his mate, and had 
seen and talked with them both. These fellows 
were not exactly in the employ of the Atlantic 
Aviation Corporation, as Captain Winkler was; 
but had leased the SX-43 from the concern and 
were flying it as a private venture. 

“They offered to take me up, too,” said Bob. 
“But I wouldn’t trust myself in that machine with 
them for any money. Captain Winkler says that, 
although they are experienced, they are the most 
reckless of any pair of aviators he has ever seen. 
I bet they are a pair of full-fledged crooks.” 

“You ought to go and see that constable at once 
and tell him,” said Louise. 

But Bob knew the uselessness of that. 

“They haven’t any idea of going away at once, 
I guess,” Bob told Betty. 

Mr. Gordon remained away over Sunday, and 
on Sunday Mr. Silas Cutler arrived at the Cor¬ 
win Canine Circus to examine the books of the 
concern. Sally promptly brought him over to the 
bungalow. They had first been to the aviation 
camp. 

“But them two fellers are off somewhere in that 
seaplane,” complained Sally. “Pop can’t be sure 
till he sees that Jasper Heddick. He says he 


AN EVENT OF MOMENT 


137 

thinks they may be the two that stole Uncle Phin’s 
auto. But that is what Betty and I do— think. 
Constable Pomfret wants to hear somebody that 
is sure.” 

“Can’t blame him. Can’t blame him at all,” 
declared Mr. Cutler, who was a man of serious 
visage but with a twinkle in his eyes that revealed 
where Sally got her sense of humor. “It is a 
serious matter to arrest folks without good rea¬ 
son. I was constable myself once and arrested a 
fellow I thought was a crazy tramp. He turned 
out to be one of these college professors that go 
around tapping rocks with a little hammer to see 
what they’re made of.” 

Mr. Cutler chuckled over his own small disas¬ 
ter. But it was evident that he could not help in 
the apprehension of the two automobile thieves 
at this time. 

They watched but did not see the SX-43 fly 
back to the hangar before night, and Mr. Cutler 
had to return to Stoneville. 

“They won’t maybe run away before I come 
down again,” was the man’s parting words to his 
daughter and Betty, who accompanied him to the 
station. 

This might have been comforting to the girls 
had not something—and a most unexpected some¬ 
thing—happened that very night. The young 
folks at the Marigold Bungalow did not hear 


138 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

about It until breakfast time on Monday morning. 
While they were all engaged in this meal Sally 
Cutler, attended by her satellite, the tattooed boy, 
arrived in great excitement. 

“The bank! What do you think! And all pop’s 
and Corwin’s money in it that we’ve took in. 
Ain’t it awful?” stammered the excited Sally. 

“What’s the matter with the bank?” asked 
Miss Anderson. 

“The Ocean Park National! It’s been robbed! 
Every cent cleaned out of it some time last night! 
And these silly police will never get it back in the 
world! What do you know about that?” 

“Oh, Bob!” gasped Betty. “Do you sup¬ 
pose-” 

Bob stared at her with the same suspicion ex¬ 
pressed in his own face. 

“Those two scoundrels?” he whispered, and 
Betty nodded. 

“Oh, I wish Uncle Dick were here!” Betty 
said. “I believe he could do something.” 



CHAPTER XVII 


WHAT FELL FROM THE SEAPLANE 

Considered in the light of reason there was 
little evidence to bolster up Betty Gordon’s and 
Bob Henderson’s belief regarding the identity 
of the Ocean Park burglars. But then suspicion 
is fed little by reason in any case. They were 
so sure that the two men working the seaplane 
SX-43 had stolen the motor-car of Sally Cutler’s 
uncle that almost any crime that was committed 
about Ocean Park could be laid in their judgment 
to Jasper Heddick and Nick Olmer. 

They had too much good sense, on the other 
hand, to undertake to set anything in motion 
against the two automobile thieves without the 
sanction of Uncle Dick. And, as it seemed, Sally 
Cutler was so excited over the fact that her 
father’s money might be lost with the bank funds 
that she seemed to have entirely overlooked the 
presence in the vicinity of the two suspicious char¬ 
acters from Stoneville. 

“The police,” said Sally, with more emphasis 
139 


140 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


than good manners or good English, “ain’t got 
the sense of a span of hoptoads! That’s a fact. 
They say the watchman that was knocked uncon¬ 
scious with a brick must know more about the rob¬ 
bery than he wants to make out, and he ain’t come 
to his senses yet! I’ve got a lot of admiration for 
these police—not!” 

“Oh, Sally!” murmured Louise. 

“Maybe Mr. Pomfret and the other police are 
like the singed cat,” giggled Bobby. “Better than 
they look.” 

“ ’Tis likely,” declared Sally with scorn, “that 
you never seen a singed cat. I don’t know for 
the life of me what good a singed cat would be 
for. There won’t be nothing done till the bank 
gets the city police down here. And they’ll do 
that, I guess.” 

Sally’s news excited the whole party at the 
bungalow very much, and instead of going down 
to the cove as they had intended and getting out 
the canoes, they all trooped over to the bank 
building and stood around with half the regular 
population of the shore resort for a part of the 
forenoon. Rumor scurried about the town and 
up and down the boardwalk as though chased by 
an autumn breeze. The burglars had been 
caught. They had not been caught. At least 
they were known. They were not known. Con¬ 
stable Pomfret had fought a battle with them 


WHAT FELL FROM THE SEAPLANE 141 

hand to hand. Mr. Pomfret had been shot down 
by the rascals in attempting their arrest. And a 
hundred other reports. 

“And if Jasp Heddick and his friend are mixed 
up in it, they have every chance of getting away,” 
said Betty to Bob. “Nobody suspects them but 
us.” 

Before the young folks left the vicinity of the 
bank even Betty and Bob doubted their former 
suspicions. It did not seem as though Heddick 
and Olmer could have had anything to do with the 
burglary, because of what Captain Winkler told 
them. 

The two friends met the gallant aviator on the 
edge of the crowd. Bob at once asked after the 
SX-43 and her crew. 

“Oh, Heddick and Olmer took her down the 
coast yesterday to give some exhibitions at a fair 
they are holding at Alliwell-by-the-Sea. They 
won’t be back until to-morrow,” said Winkler. 

“What do you know about that?” demanded 
Bob of Betty when they were alone. “If what the 
captain says is so, how could Heddick and Olmer 
have anything to do with the bank burglary?” 

This question seemed unanswerable. At least, 
it seemed there was no evidence to connect the 
two suspects with the bank robbery. 

The Ocean Park Review came out that evening 
with the story of the tracking of the bank burglars 


142 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


by Constable Pomfret as far as Calloden, where 
the automobile they had escaped in was aban¬ 
doned. Later this car was found to have been 
stolen two days before from a private garage at 
Calloden. It seemed strange that the robbers 
should have brought the car back. All trace of 
them was lost at that town, which was on a branch 
railroad that tapped the coast towns farther 
south. 

Betty and her friends lost interest in the bank 
burglary after a time. Something new was turn¬ 
ing up every hour to amuse and entertain the 
bungalow crowd. And, as Bobby observed, if it 
did not turn up they turned it up! 

Uncle Dick did not come home on that Mon¬ 
day, although Betty had expected him. But he 
sent a telegram which relieved her anxiety and 
promised to arrive by Tuesday evening. 

“Meanwhile,” she said to Bob, “those fellows 
will be able to get away, after having fooled Mr. 
Pomfret.” 

“If they are the guilty ones!” grumbled Bob. 

“Why, of course they are!” declared Betty, 
with spirit. “They may have fooled the police by 
stealing a car at Calloden, and then driving back 
there. But they can’t fool me.” 

“You’re a wonder, Betsey,” scoffed Bob, grin¬ 
ning. “How do you suppose they got to Calloden 


WHAT FELL FROM THE SEAPLANE 143 

when they are giving exhibitions away down the 
coast at Alliwell-by-the-Sea ?” 

“You’ll find,” declared Betty confidently, “that 
the railroad on which Calloden is situated goes to 
Alliwell, too.” 

Bob looked it up and then exploded: 

“Cracky, Betty! you’re as right as rain. You 
certainly are a witch. And yet they were taking 
a big chance in leaving the SX-43 unguarded—if 
they did.” 

“Burglars and motor-car thieves, I guess, are 
used to taking chances,” was Betty’s shrewd re¬ 
mark. 

On Tuesday morning nothing more had been 
learned of the bank burglars. The detectives of 
the Bankers’ Association had taken hold of the 
matter, it was understood; but perhaps they would 
discover no more than Mr. Pomfret had. 

However, as the robbery did not personally 
concern the bungalow crowd, it was already “old 
stuff.” After breakfast that morning they 
trooped away to the cove, clad in boating costume 
under their wraps—that is, they wore their bath¬ 
ing suits. For paddling or sailing about in canoes 
is a ticklish business, and they had decided it was 
much better to wet bathing suits than their other 
clothes. 

The boys had brought fishing rods and nets. 
They were determined to supply the bungalow 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


144 

table again with what Libbie called “the fruits of 
the sea.” And she learned that some of these 
“fruits” have thorns; for in dragging her hand 
through a patch of seaweed past which Timothy 
Derby was paddling their canoe, she got hold of 
a sunfish and it stung her. 

“Ow! Ouch!” shrieked Libbie. “I’m burned! 
What is it?” 

“What do you mean, burned?” demanded Bob¬ 
by, who was near by. “Burned your hand in the 
water? That certainly is a chemical marvel. 
We’d better tell Miss Anderson about that; she 
has a knowledge of chemistry.” 

Libbie’s fingers and palm were irritated, how¬ 
ever, and remained inflamed for some time. She 
was careful about trailing her hand in the sea 
after that. 

The flotilla of canoes was headed for Rocky 
Island, as there seemed to be more to do there 
than elsewhere, and the fishing was undoubtedly 
good. They had scarcely started from the dock, 
and the little flurry associated with Libbie’s dis¬ 
aster with the sunfish was over, when Betty spied 
a seaplane coming heavily up from the south. 

It was several miles away when she first saw 
it; but somehow she “just knew” it was the plane 
manned by Jasper Heddick and Nick Olmer. Bob 
carried a pair of glasses slung in a case over his 


WHAT FELL FROM THE SEAPLANE 


145 

shoulder, and Betty borrowed these and gazed 
earnestly at the approaching machine. 

“It’s those men!” she exclaimed in a low tone 
to her partner in the canoe. “It is the SX-43. I 
felt that I could not be mistaken.” 

“They are coming back from the fair, then,” 
Bob said. “Well, it proves they have not run 
away yet, that is sure. If they are the bank bur¬ 
glars they will be in reach at the station when 
Uncle Dick and Mr. Cutler return.” 

“If they only return in time!” murmured Betty. 

“But, shucks!” added her friend, “we’re really 
not sure those two fellows are guilty—of the bank 
business at least.” 

“If we’d been sure and that Pomfret man would 
have believed us, he could have arrested them on 
the old matter, and then the bank wouldn’t have 
been robbed,” declared the girl. 

“If these fellows are the bank burglars,” re¬ 
peated Bob doubtfully. 

“Oh, you and your ifs!” exclaimed Betty. “I’m 
just as sure as sure.” 

“Well, I feel that way myself—about the bank 
burglary,” admitted Bob. “And yet we haven’t 
an iota of evidence. Only suspicion. And if I 
am going to be a lawyer when I’m a man I should 
not begin accepting suspicion as evidence,” and he 
laughed. 

The SX-43 winged toward them like some great 


I4 6 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

seabird. It was flying very low, and as it came 
abreast of Rocky Island, toward which the canoes 
were headed, it suddenly swerved inshore and the 
canoeists could see the two men in the nose of 
the huge machine. 

Something was the matter in the car. Betty 
was the first to discern it. She screamed, and, 
dropping her paddle, pointed upward at the 
plunging seaplane. 

“Look there, Bob!” she shrieked. “Is it a 
fight?” 

The two men, the pilot and his mechanician, 
seemed actually to be struggling among the con¬ 
trols and levers of the seaplane’s mechanism! The 
plane swooped downward and the spectators 
thought its nose must plunge into the island. 

But at the last moment the nose of the huge 
machine lifted. The seaplane scaled over the 
hump of the island, missing the structure on the 
top by only a few yards. 

Out of the machine fell an object—just what, 
the young folks below in the cove could not tell. 
The girls cried out in unison, and Louise and Lib- 
bie covered their eyes. 

“He’s killed!” gasped Bobby. “He’s surely 
killed, falling on those rocks.” 

For they all believed that the thing which had 
fallen from the SX-43 was one of her crew. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE EXCITEMENT CONTINUES 

The great seaplane seemed to leap into the air 
above the summit of Rocky Island, and Betty and 
her friends expected it to rise into the clouds and 
disappear entirely. It was their belief at first 
that one of the men had fallen, or been thrown, 
overboard. And if this was the fact the vic¬ 
tim must have been killed, for they were well 
aware that the “hump” of the island was little 
but broken rock. 

In a moment the seaplane dipped again, how¬ 
ever, and the young people in the six canoes saw 
that both members of her crew were still in the 
cockpit of the plane. Merely, something had 
fallen from it as the seaplane passed over the 
island. 

“Hurrah!” cried Bob Henderson, greatly ex¬ 
cited. “They dropped something. Let’s get over 
there and find out what it is. It may be an im¬ 
portant discovery, Betty.” 

“Good idea, boy,” cried Tommy Tucker, who 
147 


148 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

heard him. “But what in the world is that fellow 
doing?” 

The man who must have been the assistant to 
the pilot of the seaplane was now scrambling out 
upon one of the wings a very dangerous thing to 
do, as the spectators knew. Nor was he doing it 
merely to show off. 

The pilot shook a clenched fist at his mate. The 
plane was plunging toward the water again. It 
was a fact easily discerned that the pilot was 
fumbling his controls. Libbie shrieked and cov¬ 
ered her eyes with her hands. 

“He’s going to fall! I know he will!” she 
cried, referring to the man on the wing. “He’ll 
surely fall!” 

Again the plane dipped toward the surface of 
the cove. It seemed as though the next instant 
the great machine must be submerged. 

And then suddenly, and amid a chorus of cries 
from the boys and girls, the man on the wing was 
seen to stumble and fall—or did he deliberately 
jump from the plane? At any rate, he lost hold 
of the stays and of a sudden dived headlong into 
the water! 

Instantly the pilot recovered his management 
of the controls, and the nose of the SX-43 shot 
upward again. It spiraled above the place where 
the other man had disappeared, and then shot 
away toward the aviation station, which was some 


THE EXCITEMENT CONTINUES 


149 

miles up the shore. Either purposely or because 
he could not help it, the pilot had deserted his 
comrade. 

“He’ll be drowned! He’ll be drowned!” cried 
Louise. 

“Hurry, Bob!” commanded Betty. “We must 
save him!” 

Although there was some disturbance in the 
water where the man had fallen, he did not re¬ 
appear at the surface. , 

“Do you suppose that Jasper fellow hit him?” 
demanded Betty, as she and Bob paddled des¬ 
perately toward the spot. 

“I didn’t see him if he did. But after falling 
so far he may never come up,” admitted the boy, 
soberly. 

“The poor fellow!” murmured Betty Gordon. 

Although heretofore Nick Olmer had seemed 
to her mind quite as wicked as his mate, at once he 
became an object of pity. Betty paddled as hard 
as Bob himself. But no head broke the troubled 
surface of the cove. Their sharp eyes searched 
the water with growing anxiety. 

“Looks as though he wasn’t coming up,” de¬ 
clared Bob. 

Suddenly something appeared in the water 
some yards nearer the rocky island. 

“Look! Is that the man?” yelled W. M. 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


150 

Brown, coming up in the canoe with Alice Guerin. 
See it?” 

“It’s a seal!” shouted Gilbert Lane, from still 
farther away. 

“It’s something, Bob, something alive! See it 
dive again? Like that porpoise that frightened 
me so at the bathing beach.” 

“It’s that airman,” said Bob, with confidence, 
and plunged his paddle into the water again to 
make after the swimmer. 

“Why doesn’t he wait? We could help him,” 
went on Betty. 

“He’s scared. Or he doesn’t see 11s. Or some¬ 
thing!” chopped off Bob. “Say! he can swim, 
all right. Look at him scoot under water, will 
you!” 

Olmer, if it were he, was a remarkable swim¬ 
mer. He kept well ahead of the leading canoe— 
indeed he gained upon it. 

“Just the same, we’ll catch him on shore and 
make him explain,” muttered Bob. 

But suddenly the swimmer disappeared alto¬ 
gether. If he dived to escape observation he did 
not come up. The six canoes were paddled all 
about the place of his final disappearance, just off 
the rocky beach of the island. The boys and girls 
did not find another trace of him. 

“It is awful! awful!” wailed Libbie. “It’s sim¬ 
ply terrible!” 


THE EXCITEMENT CONTINUES 


151 

It did seem that if he was alive he must have 
come up before this to breathe. Twelve pair of 
sharp young eyes could not have missed him had 
he crept out on the shore. And he certainly had 
not swum out into the middle of the cove again. 

“He is drowned,” stated Betty, her voice 
shaking. 

“I—I guess the body would come up if he 
was,” hesitated Bob. 

“Maybe he got entangled in something,” 
Louise suggested, her voice likewise quavering. 
“It is dreadful.” 

“And that plane has disappeared,” Norma ob¬ 
served. “We must report this.” 

“Whom shall we report to?” demanded one of 
the twins. 

“Thank goodness, Uncle Dick will be home in 
time for dinner,” said Betty. “We can’t do any¬ 
thing now-” 

“Yes, we can!” cried Libbie, her mind at work 
again. “We can go ashore and find the thing 
they threw out of the plane.” 

“That child has an idea once in a while,” Bob¬ 
by said briskly. “Let’s go.” 

“It’s not a bad plan,” agreed Bob, glad to do 
something. 

They were much disturbed by the catastrophe; 
but the idea of making some further discovery 
was interesting. They headed the canoes for the 



BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


152 

shore. The girls stepped out first, and then the 
boys carefully drew the canoes up so that nothing 
could happen to them. Before ascending to the 
summit of the ridge they explored all along the 
cove side of the island. 

“If that fellow wasn’t drowned he certainly did 
not come ashore on this side,” Betty remarked, 
positively. 

“He’d have to be a pretty good swimmer if he 
went around the island, and without us seeing 
him,” grumbled Bob. 

“He couldn’t have done that,” Betty replied. 
“Something awful has happened to him, I know.” 

“I guess that is so,” agreed Bob. “I never saw 
a sign of him after he went down that last time.” 

They clambered up the rocks in a depressed 
mood. Even the twins had nothing hopeful to 
offer. They had marked well the place where the 
object from the plane had fallen. It was just 
north of the beacon framework which Bobby in¬ 
sisted upon calling the pirate gibbet. 

Betty was not at the head of the procession as 
the boys and girls mounted the steep way. Tom¬ 
my and Teddy, considerably out of breath, ar¬ 
rived first at the framework. 

“Hi, folks!” shouted Tommy, “don’t see a 
thing. It looked big enough when it fell out of 
the plane. But the rocks are as bare as your 
hand.” 


THE EXCITEMENT CONTINUES 


153 

His brother suddenly gave a yell and darted 
forward, falling on his knees. 

“Look!” he cried. “Somebody’s been here. 
Look at this! Sure as you’re a foot high, Bob 
Henderson, somebody has just been up here ahead 
of us. And I never saw a thing moving, did you ?” 

The others joined him quickly. The traces that 
had so excited Teddy Tucker puzzled his mates as 
much as his discovery puzzled Ted. For a min¬ 
ute nobody had any explanation to offer. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE 

“What is the matter with the boy?” Bobby 
demanded. “What’s he down there on his hands 
and knees for? Think that thing that dropped 
from the seaplane has sunk into the ground? 
What a chance!” 

But Betty stooped over Teddy Tucker to stare 
down at what had so surprised the blond twin. 

“See those wet marks, Betty?” he cried eagerly. 
“Footprints. Somebody was here only a minute 
or two ago, and his feet were wet.” 

“You are right, Ted,” said Betty, with equal 
confidence. “But who was it and where has he 
gone?” 

“First question is easy,” interposed Bob, look¬ 
ing oyer her shoulder. “That Nick Olmer who 
fell off the SX-43.” 

“Oh, Bob, do you think-” 

“Hear the fellow!” exclaimed Gilbert Lane. 
“Jumping at conclusions all right, same as usual.” 

“Huh!” rejoined Bob, somewhat ruffled. “You 
154 



A COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE 


155 

needn’t be cocky about it, Gil. My guess is better 
than yours, I bet. Who do you think made those 
wet marks?” 

“Well-” 

“Ah!” said the scornful Bob. “Easy enough 
to say I don’t know what I am talking about. But 
can you make a better guess?” 

“Hush, boys,” said Betty, sighing. “Don’t 
quarrel. Of course, whoeveV made these foot¬ 
prints was here only a minute or two ago. The 
sun is burning them up already. And where did 
he come from? How did he get here if it was 
that man from the plane?” 

“Believe me!” ejaculated Bobby, “this is some 
mystery. The fellow disappears in the cove, and 
then reappears up here and grabs whatever fell 
from the plane. For, of course, that is what he 
came here for.” 

“And he certainly got it,” murmured Norma 
Guerin, looking all about, as the others were do¬ 
ing. “There’s not a sign of anything here now.” 

“It looked like a black bag, didn’t it?” Tim¬ 
othy Derby said. “It might hold all the money 
they stole at the bank.” 

“Hooray!” ejaculated Tommy Tucker. “Takes 
an imagination like Timothy’s to suggest that.” 

“Well, why not?” demanded Libbie, quickly 
backing up her friend. “If those two awful men 
stole the money from the bank, and it fell out of 



156 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

that plane, this one has swum ashore to get it 
again.” 

“And he’s got it—I’ll say he has,” grumbled 
Bob. “But tell me, you folks, where has he gone 
with it? And what does it all mean?” 

“They quarreled,” Betty declared with finality. 

“It did look as though they were struggling in 
the cockpit of the seaplane,” Louise agreed 
thoughtfully. 

“The bag—or whatever it was—was pitched 
out. It didn’t fall,” said Timothy, who seemed 
entirely sure of this statement. 

“That is just as good an idea as any other,” 
said Bob, but looking puzzled. “It gets me!” 

“What gets me,” put in Bobby, “is how that 
man got ashore and crept up here to get the bag 
without our seeing him.” 

These questions were not to be easily answered. 
That was plain. But they all agreed that it was 
Olmer who had jumped from the seaplane and 
had somehow got ashore and secured the bag. 
Beyond this was nothing but supposition. 

It could not be expected, however, that Betty 
Gordon and her friends should be long enthralled 
by this puzzling affair. As they were now pretty 
well assured that Nick Olmer had got ashore 
safely, and had even recovered whatever had been 
dropped or flung from the seaplane, there was 
little cause for worriment. 


A COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE 


157 

“Say! how about eats pretty soon?” Gil Lane 
demanded. “Seems to me in spite of all this 
excitement I am growing more ravenous by the 
minute. How about it, Bob?” 

“Did you girls bring any lunch?” W. M. Brown 
demanded, looking at Alice. 

“We brought enough for ourselves, of course,” 
rejoined Alice smartly. “But you can’t expect us 
to feed six great boys as well? The canoes would 
not have held the provender.” 

“Hear! Hear!” shouted Bobby. “Well said, 
Alice.” 

“You said you would catch fish,” Betty re¬ 
minded them. “Be about it, like good boys. 
Norma said she had helped to make a fish-fry up 
in the woods once, and she will boss the affair. 
Do get busy, boys.” 

“I’m game,” agreed Bob, and proceeded at once 
to run down for his fishing tackle. 

The other boys joined him—all but Timothy 
Derby. And he was not missed until, at least an 
hour later, the girls called for Libbie to aid in 
handling one of the pans in which the freshly 
caught fish were sizzling. 

“Where’s that girl?” Bobby demanded. “She’s 
a regular lazybones!” 

“Hey! Have you seen Tim anywhere? Has 
he caught any fish?” shouted Teddy Tucker from 
the rocks below. 


*58 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“I do believe they have mooned off together,” 
said Bobby, with exasperation. 

“Who has? The Siamese Twins—Libbie and 
Tim?” demanded Tommy, the dark twin, coming 
up to the fire near the “gibbet” with another fine 
bass. 

“Sh!” whispered Norma, with the air of a 
conspirator, and pointing, “I saw Libbie going 
that way, and she had a book.” 

“Those futurist poems, or whatever they are,” 
grumbled Bobby. “Blank verse, and so very 
blank that I can’t get a word of sense out of them. 
I read a whole page this morning.” 

But Tommy became very active at once. He 
ran back to the shore where he had been fishing, 
and soon returned with a very lively hermit crab 
squirming on his hook. He winked at the girls. 

“Leave those poetasters to me,” he begged. 
“I know where they are holed up. Behind that 
big bowlder. There is a seat there like an arm¬ 
chair, from which you can look out to sea. Libbie 
says it is ‘so romantic.’ ” And wicked Tommy 
made a most excruciating face as he quoted the 
dreamer. 

Without being retarded by the other girls, the 
plotter crept along the ridge of the island and 
finally reached the round-backed bowlder in ques¬ 
tion. He could not see what was on the other 
side of it; but, being positive of his quarry, he 


A COMPLETE DISAPPEARANCE 


159 

raised the point of his fishing pole and let the 
squirming crab drop out of sight. 

The next moment a wild shriek sounded from 
behind the rock. But the voice was not that of 
Libbie Littell, nor was it Timothy’s more mascu¬ 
line tones. It was plain that the crab had routed 
out other visitors to Rocky Island, and Betty and 
her girl friends came running to the spot in much 
amazement. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE DANCERS 

“Now what have you done, Tommy Tucker?” 
demanded Bobby, as usual blaming the dark com- 
plexioned twin, whether he was intentionally guilty 
of bringing on disaster or not. “There’s some¬ 
body there, and I am positive it isn’t Libbie and 
Timothy.” 

But Tommy only grinned. “I’ve stirred some¬ 
thing up, all right,” he muttered, and tried to jerk 
back the crab. 

Somebody had seized the line on the other side 
of the rock, however, and as Tommy went around 
in one direction a young man in yachting costume 
and with a red and angry face, appeared from the 
other side. This stranger held the fishline with 
the struggling crab still attached to the hook. 

“Who did this?” he demanded angrily. “It 
might have got into her hair.” 

“Into whose hair, please?” asked Betty. “I 
am very sorry if——” 

“Florianne’s. That crab might have bitten her. 
Where’s the boy with the pole?” 

160 



THE DANCERS 


161 


Here Tommy Tucker appeared again, grinning. 
And with him came a slender woman who, at first 
sight, the girls thought must be quite young. 
Then they realized that she was only made up to 
look young. 

“No harm done, Johnny,” said the woman 
kindly. “Boy thought he was playing a joke on 
some of his own folks. It’s all right.” 

She was a kindly-spoken person, with bright 
eyes. Her hair was really silvery. But her face 
was rouged and powdered as though she was just 
ready to step out before the footlights. 

“Oh!” cried Betty suddenly, “did you two see 
that seaplane go over the island?” 

“We heard it,” agreed the young man called 
Johnny, giving Tommy the crab with some vexa¬ 
tion. “But we did not look at it. Why do you 
ask?” 

“The men dropped a bag on the island here,” 
Betty explained. “You did not see it?” 

“Not at all,” said the woman briskly. “We 
were down there in a fine little cavern where there 
is a sanded floor, practising new steps. I am 
Florianne.” 

She spoke as though the whole world should 
know who she was. Betty dimpled and smiled 
politely. 

“Oh!” she murmured. “How interesting. You 


z 62 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

did not find anything—a black bag, we think it 
was—here on the rocks?” 

“We only found that nasty crab,” said the 
young man in yachting costume, glaring at Tommy 
Tucker. 

“Now, Johnny!” admonished Florianne. She 
seemed a pleasant woman, if a little too gay in 
her dress and make up. Betty and her friends 
really had never seen so much paint and powder 
worn off the stage. 

There was reason for this, however, as soon 
became apparent. Florianne was not slow to tell 
Betty and the other listening girls all about her 
affairs. 

“I am resting between seasons over there at 
Ocean Park. And now the management have 
offered me an opportunity to arrange a series of 
folk dances for the local charities. Of course, it 
is a splendid advertisement for me. The enter¬ 
tainment will be held on the boardwalk, and in 
the evening. Johnny—he’s my partner and, let 
me whisper,” she added, coming closer to Betty, 
“he’s my own sister’s son, so he’s my nephew. 
But don’t tell anybody. I am supposed to be 
altogether too young to own a nephew of his age,” 
and she laughed. 

“I understand,” said Betty, who, like the other 
girls, was vastly interested in the dancer’s obser¬ 
vations. 


THE DANCERS 


163 

“Why I am telling you this, my dears,” said 
Florianne, searching the group of girls with very 
bright eyes, “is because I foresee that you can 
help me. I need all the girls I can get to make 
the ensemble a colorful bit. And I guarantee you 
can all dance.” 

“Oh, yes, indeed, Miss Florianne!” cried Betty. 
“We are taught some folk dancing, and what Miss 
Anderson calls ‘nature dancing’ at our school. 
Miss Anderson, our physical culture instructor, is 
here with us at Ocean Park.” 

“That is fine,” declared the dancer. “I am 
coming to see you all, and your teacher-” 

“Oh, Betty! The fish!” shrieked Bobby sud¬ 
denly, and raced back to the fire. 

“Here! You’d better take that crab with you 
and cook it,” said Johnny, Florianne’s partner. 

“Don’t be a grouch, Johnny,” said that lady, 
with a charming smile, and she strolled after the 
girls and Tommy Tucker to the scene of the fish- 
fry. 

In a little while the other boys came up over 
the rocks, and then the missing Libbie and Tim¬ 
othy, with their book of poems, appeared from a 
quite unexpected direction, and they were all 
introduced to the two dancers. 

The latter joined the young people at lunch, 
and the crisply fried fish and French fried pota¬ 
toes were pronounced better than could be bought 



164 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

at the Campeachie. At least, the food was sea¬ 
soned with much fun and repartee. 

Florianne and her nephew had come over to 
the island in a motor-boat, and that had been 
hidden on the seaward side of Rocky Island. 
After luncheon they got into it and chugged away, 
the dancer promising to call at Marigold Bunga¬ 
low the next day to arrange with Miss Anderson 
about her pupils helping in the charity entertain¬ 
ment that would soon take place on the boardwalk. 

The appearance of the dancers, and the 
luncheon that had followed, had completely 
shifted the general thought and conversation of 
the Bungalow Canoe Club from the bank robbers 
to other but no less interesting matters. Now 
as they paddled back to the dock they began to 
discuss that topic once more. 

It did seem as though the pilot of the SX-43 
was a very terrible fellow. He had deserted his 
mate under very strange conditions. 

“I wonder what sort of story he will tell when 
they ask him about Olmer?” Betty observed. “He 
must make some explanation of the man’s absence, 
of course.” 

“We’ll find out about that,” said her boy chum. 
“Jasper Heddick must be arrested now, whether 
we can connect him with the robbery of the bank 
or not. Here are twelve of us who saw what hap¬ 
pened to Nick Olmer. And Heddick was at least 


THE DANCERS 165 

partly to blame. Anyway, he deserted his com¬ 
rade.” 

“I guess even Constable Pomfret will agree 
that something must be done,” sighed Betty. 

Mr. Gordon was at home when the party ar¬ 
rived, and all the young people tried to tell the 
tale of wonder and adventure at once. 

“Help!” begged that gentleman laughingly. 
“If I had twelve pairs of ears with which to dis¬ 
tinguish twelve different tales at once I could get 
on better.” 

Finally it was voted that Betty should relate 
the happenings of the day. She did so earnestly, 
as well as clearly. The smile disappeared from 
Uncle Dick’s face. This was no matter of sport. 
Something that bordered on crime had been com¬ 
mitted, aside from the robbing of the local bank. 

“Whether those two young men we suspect of 
being automobile thieves are connected with the 
bank robbery or not,” he said gravely, “it is plain 
that you young people saw a quarrel between them 
—a quarrel that was well nigh fatal. And what 
they dropped from the seaplane, which this Nick 
Olmer doubtless recovered and has hidden on 
Rocky Island, is something that perhaps Mr. 
Pomfret would be glad to get hold of.” 

He took down the receiver of the telephone and 
called the office of the constable. Mr. Pomfret 
was not so hard to convince now that there was 


166 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


something wrong about Heddick and Olmer, the 
crew of SX-43. He and the other local authorities 
were much puzzled by the bank robbery, and they 
were eager to grasp at any straw that might lead 
to the solving of the mystery. 

“I’ll be right over to Marigold Bungalow,” said 
the constable, and he kept his word. 

“This is a bad business, a bad business,” he said, 
when he came into the house. “Of course, the 
bank is open again, having received aid from the 
Bankers’ Association. But the stolen money has 
disappeared and we can’t get a clue to the culprits.” 

“Have you considered those two young men 
whom I called to your attention as possible auto 
thieves?” asked Mr. Gordon. 

“Nothing in it! I’ve been to the aviation sta¬ 
tion,” declared Mr. Pomfret hastily. “The 
SX-43 an d her crew were down the coast when 
the burglary happened. Doing stunt flights at 
Alliwell-by-the-Sea. Nothing to it.” 

“Just listen to this,” Mr. Gordon urged, and 
repeated what his wards and the other boys and 
girls had so recently seen near and on Rocky 
Island. “It may be that Heddick and Olmer had 
nothing to do with the bank robbery; but they 
have evidently quarreled and, that being the case, 
this may be the time when just men can get their 
dues,” and he smiled. 

“I believe you!” ejaculated the constable. “It 


THE DANCERS 


167 

looks promising. Without direct testimony I 
could not see my way to apprehending those fel¬ 
lows as auto thieves. But now—come over to the 
aviation station with me, Mr. Gordon, will you? 
And let your niece and ward come with us.” 

Naturally Betty and Bob were eager to go. In 
the constable’s car they traveled swiftly by the 
Shore Road, through the broad salt marshes, to 
the Atlantic Aviation Corporation’s camp. All 
the seaplanes were now down, for evening was 
approaching. 

They saw the SX-43 before one of the great 
hangars and a man was working about it. But 
this man was neither Jasper Heddick nor his 
mechanician. Mr. Pomfret went to the office to 
make inquiries. 

U I don’t believe Jasp Heddick is here,” mut¬ 
tered Bob to Betty. “After what happened to-day 
he will get away. You see!” 

“Oh, Bob!” she cried, clasping her hands. “He 
must be arrested.” 

Captain Winkler came along, and they asked 
him about the missing aviator. Heddick had been 
seen to land alone before noon and had soon 
disappeared. Nobody had observed Nick Olmer. 

“There’s been a blow-up between them, I 
guess,” said Captain Winkler. “They often 
quarreled.” 

“This is serious, Captain Winkler,” said Mr. 


168 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


Gordon. “Are you sure you have not seen Hed- 
dick since noon?” 

“Sure. And I’ll say it’s serious, too,” Winkler 
rejoined, with his slow smile. “I have just learned 
that it is likely he will not show up here again. 
He owes the Corporation four hundred dollars, I 
understand, for use of the plane. It is pretty 
sure that Jasper Heddick has absconded.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


BOARDWALK DIVERSIONS 

Betty and her uncle and Bob Henderson re¬ 
turned from the aviation station in considerable 
puzzlement of mind. One fact only seemed clear. 
Jasper Heddick had disappeared. Just what had 
happened to his mate at Rocky Island even the 
most imaginative of the young people could not 
guess. 

The interest of Betty and Bob, as well as of 
their friends, in the bank robbery and the fact that 
the crew of the seaplane SX-43 were probably 
connected with that crime, was rather dwarfed 
during the next few days by the plans for the folk 
dances on the boardwalk. That is, the girls’ 
interest therein caused them to forget other 
matters. 

Florianne, who was a very sweet-tempered 
woman and of whom Miss Anderson approved 
when she came to Marigold Bungalow, inspired 
Betty and her girl friends with enthusiasm for the 
“show.” The boys felt themselves rather neglected 
169 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


170 

for a while. Bob and the others found plenty 
of amusement, however, in boating and fishing and 
swimming. 

The very day after they had seen Nick Olmer 
fall from the seaplane, Bob came to Mr. Gordon 
and reported that Constable Pomfret and a party 
of the local police had landed on Rocky Island 
and had searched it with seeming thoroughness, 
but without finding the missing aviator. 

“Of course Nick Olmer is gone,” Bob stated 
with confidence. “And whatever it was he dropped 
from the plane that time is gone with him.” 

“You mean the money stolen from the bank,” 
said Timothy Derby seriously. 

“You seem so sure of that, you must have inside 
knowledge,” declared Bobby, with some scorn. 

“Why! what else could it be?” demanded Lib- 
bie, bound to back up Timothy. 

The question did seem unanswerable. Betty 
wanted to know, however, how Olmer could have 
got away from the island without a boat and 
burdened by the bag of money, some of which 
they knew was in coin. 

“That is your own question, Betty,” laughed 
Bob. “You answer it. At any rate, he has got 
away and nobody knows where Jasp Heddick is, 
either. It’s a puzzle.” 

It remained a puzzle. But the members of the 
Bungalow Canoe Club had “other fish to fry” and 


BOARDWALK DIVERSIONS 


171 


gave small attention just now to the aftermath of 
the bank robbery. Even when Mr. Cutler arrived 
at Ocean Park the next Sunday there was nothing 
he could do toward identifying the two rascals. 

“You can’t be sure of anybody’s identification 
if you don’t see ’em, or at last see their pictures,” 
declared Sally. 

The crowd at Marigold Bungalow found plenty 
of amusement and excitement in addition to the 
girls’ rehearsals for the folk dances. There was 
not a show in Ocean Park that the twelve did not 
enter, not a “shoot the chutes” or a “ride” they 
did not enjoy. Naturally there were some enter¬ 
tainments they favored more than they did others, 
and they went several times to the canine circus. 

Sally and the tattooed boy sometimes joined 
the bungalow crowd at the bathing beach in the 
morning. But Ben Michaels kept away from the 
water after his first unfortunate experience. He 
confessed to Betty, who was interested in the slow- 
witted fellow, that he “just hated being a freak” 
and that he would rather remain in Maine all the 
year round and work on his grandfather’s farm. 

“But mom makes me go to school in the winter. 
We have a good school. And she says she won’t 
shave her beard until she has enough money saved 
up to put me through college,” and he sighed. 

Betty was somewhat impressed by this, and she 
wondered if Uncle Dick had not been slightly 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


172 

mistaken in intimating that the exhibition of one’s 
personal peculiarities as a freak in a side show 
was always from the urge of vanity. She asked 
him about this. 

“Perhaps my statement was rather too broad,” 
confessed Mr. Gordon, but smiling. “However, 
Sally says that Mrs. Michaels is so handy with her 
needle that she might earn a good living with it. 
The development of that talent might do quite as 
much for young Ben, and she could keep him out 
of the circus environment.” 

Betty Gordon’s main interest was given to the 
charity entertainment scheduled for one evening 
on the boardwalk in front of the Colosseum. 
Florianne, as a professional dancer, found the 
material among the girls and young women at the 
seaside resort quite sufficient for all purposes of 
the “show.” The six girls from Marigold Bunga¬ 
low—even Libbie who abhorred exertion of any 
kind, so Bobby wickedly suggested, save at meal 
time—entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of 
the affair. 

They were in the first half of the entertainment, 
and their particular dance went off splendidly. 
At one place in the dance Betty had a part that 
took her to the front of the stage, while the other 
dancers were grouped a little distance back of her. 

It was a very small part, and she had not more 
than a dozen steps before the others would move 


BOARDWALK DIVERSIONS 


173 

forward to either side of her. But in this moment 
of time, as Betty stood apart from the other 
dancers and with the jumble of faces of the audi¬ 
ence before her, she felt suddenly like a small 
child miles away from every other human being. 

When just on the point of flinging her arms 
outward and upward and taking the first steps, as 
Florianne had taught her, she had the feeling that 
she was moving like a jointed doll. Then, at the 
most important moment, Bob’s cheerful face and 
encouraging grin stood out suddenly from that 
mass of faces, and she flung herself into the dance 
with abandon. In another moment the other 
dancers were at her side and she was again one of 
many, and after another few minutes this par¬ 
ticular dance was over. 

The applause was loud and long and hearty. 
Did they not have the six Salsette boys to lead it? 
And who could make more noise than Bob Hen¬ 
derson and his chums, especially when they were 
as honestly enthusiastic as they were now, for the 
dance was very pretty and had been well done? 

After this dance the girls changed to their usual 
dresses, and took their places on the steps of the 
Colosseum, which faced the end of the steel pier. 

The second half of the entertainment was in 
progress. Florianne led a well trained group of 
the older performers in a series of steps that 
excited the great crowd which had gathered to 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


174 

a noisy appreciation of their efforts. Suddenly 
Betty Gordon was made aware of somebody tug¬ 
ging at her sweater from behind. She darted a 
glance over her shoulder to recognize Sally Cutler 
in the ornate costume she always wore in the ticket 
booth. 

“Goodness, Sally! can you leave the ticket 
booth at this time?” asked Betty. 

“Corwin’s in my place, and Ben is waiting for 
me right back here. I’ve got something dreadful’ 
exciting to tell you, Betty.” 

“What is it?” 

“Listen, Betty. It’s that awful Jasp Heddick. 
I just seen him to-night. He is disguised like a 
chauffeur. But I’d know him in them puttees and 
goggles anywhere.” 

“Oh, Sally!” gasped Betty. “He is not in town 
any more! He wouldn’t dare be! You have made 
a mistake!” 

“I have not. Ben’s watching him now. He’s 
reading a paper in a restaurant up the boardwalk. 
We followed him over here from the circus. I 
tell you I’m sure, Betty Gordon!” 

“I want to see. I can’t believe it,” said Betty, 
and she followed Sally out of the crowd without 
saying a word to anybody else. It did not enter 
her mind at the moment that even if the suspect 
proved to be Jasper Heddick she could do nothing 
to apprehend him. 


BOARDWALK DIVERSIONS 


175 

The two girls wormed their way through the 
press of spectators, descended the Colosseum 
steps at the northern end, and so reached the edge 
of the crowd that surrounded the roped arena 
inside which the dances were taking place. 

“Here’s Ben Michaels!” exclaimed Sally. 
“What did I tell you, Betty? He’s there yet, 
ain’t he, Ben?” 

“Drinking a cup of coffee and reading his 
paper,” replied the tattooed boy, who must have 
run away from his mother and the show, for he 
had only a long coat over his spangled costume. 

“Show me!” exclaimed Betty eagerly. 

Ben started up the boardwalk at once and the 
two girls followed him closely. There were not 
many people in this direction, for the entire 
interest of the crowd was centered in the dances. 

“There’s the place,” whispered Sally. 

“Oh! The Silvershell Lunch?” queried Betty. 

“That’s it,” Ben replied. “Come this way and 
I’ll show you.” 

They went into the ally beside the concession 
and Ben pointed through a small side window into 
the lunchroom. Betty Gordon saw a man in a 
maroon uniform, evidently that of a chauffeur, 
wearing his cap and with his goggles pushed up, 
drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Had 
they looked in from the boardwalk she would have 
been unable to see his face at all. 


176 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“Ain’t that Heddick?” hissed Sally. “I’d better 
call a cop, hadn’t I?” 

“Oh, wait!” cried Betty. “I’m not sure——” 

“I am,” proclaimed the other girl decidedly. 

“I—I—if it is Jasper Heddick, how dare he 
come back here to Ocean Park?” asked Betty 
Gordon. 

“Say!” exclaimed Ben, who seemed now to be 
not so slow-witted as he sometimes appeared, 
“that’s easy. If them fellers dropped the bank 
money out of the plane on to the island, like you 
folks say they did, then this Jasper has come back 
for it.” 

“Oh!” gasped Betty. “But the other one got 
it.” 

“This Jasper Heddick don’t know that,” de¬ 
clared Sally, with conviction. “Ben’s got the rights 
of it, I believe.” 

“Maybe that is so,” admitted Betty. “But if 
we cause his arrest right now we shall never be 
able to prove that he has returned for the money.” 

“That’s a fact,” grumbled Sally. 

“Let’s watch him and see if he goes to the 
island,” said Ben. 

“We’ll both get scolded if we don’t go back to 
the show,” Sally objected. 

“There won’t be much of a crowd at the show 
to-night,” the tattooed boy remarked recklessly. 



BOARDWALK DIVERSIONS 


177 

“Who cares? I’d like to see what this Jasper 
Heddick is up to.” 

“Oh, so should I,” cried Betty. 

Betty had begun to make plans now. She was 
excited. She had no idea why the ex-aviator was 
waiting in this restaurant. But she believed that, 
as Ben said, he should be watched rather than 
arrested. 

“I tell you what,” she said eagerly. “I’ll tell 
Uncle Dick if I can find him. And Bob Hender¬ 
son. Maybe we can capture this man in the very 
act of hunting for whatever fell from the seaplane 
on Rocky Island. If he doesn’t know that Nick 
Olmer was not drowned, perhaps he hopes to find 
on the island that thing they dropped. Will you 
watch him, Ben?” 

“He won’t get away from me easy,” said the 
tattooed boy confidently. “He doesn’t know me, 
and won’t suspect me; but you girls had better 
keep out of his sight.” 

This seemed good advice, and Betty and the 
circus girl stole away, leaving Ben Michaels to 
watch the suspected bank robber. Both girls were 
trembling with excitement. Even the bold Sally 
felt that the occasion was hazardous. 


CHAPTER XXII 


TRAILING JASPER HEDDICK 

The entire bungalow crowd would have been 
hard to gather at that time, but the two excited 
girls managed to get Mr. Gordon and Bob Hen¬ 
derson into a little eddy in the throng watching 
the dancing, where they could gain a moment’s 
private conversation. A few words were sufficient 
to rouse the interest of both Betty’s guardian and 
her boy chum. 

“Here is something doing, sure enough!” ex¬ 
claimed Bob, looking at Betty in wonder. “You 
do manage to stir up the most exciting things.” 

“It is Sally who has stirred this up,” declared 
Betty modestly. 

“And that fellow may be getting away from us 
right now,” interrupted the girl from the dog 
circus. “Ben will follow him; but who will follow 
Ben?” 

“I guess you are right, my girl,” agreed Mr. 
Gordon briskly. “Something must be done imme¬ 
diately about apprehending this Heddick. What 

178 


TRAILING JASPER HEDDICK 


179 

you young people saw of the fight between the 
two aviators convinces me that they are desperate 
men. We can do absolutely nothing without the 
police.” 

“He’ll get away!” wailed Sally. 

“No. You and Betty run and watch. If he 
starts off, let your friend, the tattooed boy, follow 
him and you girls keep him in sight. Wait here 
with me, Bob. I must first of all telephone to 
Pomfret.” 

Mr. Gordon saw Miss Anderson and advised 
her to take the rest of the young people home 
after the entertainment, while he and Betty and 
Bob were engaged. He said nothing about the 
new discovery, for he did not want the whole 
crowd “tagging after them,” as Bob expressed it. 

Then Mr. Gordon sought a telephone and ob¬ 
tained speech with the chief constable of Ocean 
Park. When Betty ran back to report that the 
suspect was already leaving the Silvershell Lunch¬ 
room, her guardian had gained Constable Pom- 
fret’s promise to come right over. 

“He will be here in ten minutes or so,” said 
Mr. Gordon. 

“He’ll be too late!” cried the excited Betty. 
“If that horrid fellow gets away from us this time 
I shall be in despair! Don’t you think, Uncle 
Dick, that we ought to go right up and grab him, 
police or no police?” 


180 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“We can scarcely do that legally. For, you see, 
there is no warrant out for him and I do not care 
to risk a suit for false arrest. Nor do I want you 
young folks to appear personally in this affair, 
if it can be helped. The police must get their own 
evidence without dragging you, Betty, or even 
Sally, into the case.” 

They left Bob sitting on the steps of the Colos¬ 
seum, and Uncle Dick and Betty joined Sally on 
the boardwalk. She said that Ben was trailing the 
man who they were sure had been pilot of the sea¬ 
plane SX-43. The conspirators followed Ben 
Michaels. The crowd was thinning rapidly at this 
end of the boardwalk and Heddick kept straight 
on toward the beaches. 

When the constable arrived at the spot where 
Bob waited he had a bank detective with him. 
The constable was excited. 

“Where is Mr. Gordon?” he demanded. “After 
the suspect? Show me, then!” 

“Yes, sir,” said Bob briskly, starting off. 

“Are you sure it is that Heddick?” 

“The girls are,” answered Bob. “And theyVe 
got sharp eyes.” 

“Very strange,” muttered the constable. “Come 
along, Briggs. There really may be something in 
this.” 

They did not overtake Betty and Uncle Dick 
and the others until they arraved at the extreme 


TRAILING JASPER HEDDICK 181 

end of the boardwalk. From that point the lights 
at the boathouse on the shore of the cove were 
visible. 

“Hurry up!” whispered Betty, quite enthralled 
by the situation. “Uncle Dick says Heddick has 
hired a motor-boat of Horace Jones and gone out 
to the island. We’ll get another and follow the 
fellow.” 

“Cricky, Betsey! this is great,” declared her 
boy friend. “If there is an arrest we’ll be right 
in it.” 

“I hope nothing will happen to let that man get 
away,” said the girl. “He is the most slippery 
fellow!” 

“You said something,” agreed Bob. 

Mr. Gordon and Constable Pomfret and the 
detective went ahead across the sands. Arriving 
at the boathouse, they found Horace Jones, the 
old man who took care of the young people’s 
canoes, already getting a big launch ready. 

“Did you know that fellow who hired your 
other boat, Horace?” Mr. Gordon asked. 

“Seen him,” said Jones with characteristic 
bruskness. “He’s one o’ them crazy flying men. 
Or, he was. He’s raisin’ a mustache, he is, and 
looks some different. But I shouldn’t be surprised 
if his name is Heddick.” 

“Looks as if we’d got him,” said Constable 
Pomfret, now growing enthusiastic. “If his mate 


182 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


is over there on Rocky Island, we’ll gather both 
of ’em in.” 

“And don’t forget the bag of money,” said 
Bob eagerly. “They dropped that from the sea¬ 
plane. Maybe their struggle before the bag fell 
was just put on. I guess they planned this all 
out beforehand.” 

But Mr. Gordon and the two officers were only 
amused by the boy’s belief. However, all of them 
were confident that Jasper Heddick was about to 
be apprehended, whether his comrade, Olmer, was 
or not. 

Jones ran them out to the island in a very short 
time. They had lost sight of the lights of the 
motor-boat that Heddick had sailed in from the 
dock. But Jones ran the launch along the rocky 
shores until the other craft was spied, drawn close 
to the rocks in a small basin. 

“Lights out. She’s there, just the same,” said 
the old boatman. “Want her?” 

“If she is drawn out here those fellows—if 
either or both are on the island—cannot very 
well escape,” said Pomfret. “Yes. We’ll capture 
the enemy’s boat.” 

They did this, and towed the second boat around 
to the seaward side of the island, where the offi¬ 
cers and Mr. Gordon, as well as the quartette of 
young people, landed. 

“Don’t wander away by yourselves, boys and 


TRAILING JASPER HEDDICK ^3 

girls,” commanded Mr. Gordon, as Jones pushed 
off again and moved the two boats to a point some 
rods off shore. “Remember this is no play we are 
engaged in. It may be that the two men we are 
looking for are armed and are desperate. They 
must be criminals, in any case.” 

“Oh!” gasped Betty. “You don’t suppose they 
would shoot us, do you, Uncle Dick?” 

“They won’t if they’ve got right good sense,” 
put in Sally Cutler before Mr. Gordon could 
reply. “If that Jasp, or if Nick Olmer, shoots me 
or Ben my father will send them to prison for the 
rest of their lives.” 

“Huh!” ejaculated Bob in some disdain. “That 
wouldn’t do you much good after you were shot, 
Sally.” 

“Mind what I say,” Mr. Gordon added. “Keep 
behind us. And don’t talk much. We do not 
want to advertise our presence to those fellows, 
if they are here.” 

The search was thoroughly done by Mr. Gor¬ 
don and the two officers, but, oddly enough, after 
searching the island from end to end, no sign of 
the two ex-aviators was found. The party looked 
into many shallow caves, too; none of them held 
any refuge, nor showed any sign of having been 
occupied. 

“They’ve got to be here!” cried Sally, but under 
her breath. “They just got to be, Mr. Gordon!” 


184 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

“That seems probable. But they are so well 
hidden that we cannot find them,” rejoined Betty’s 
guardian. “Especially at night. These lanterns 
do not reveal as much as sunlight will. What 
say, Pomfret?” 

“I agree with you,” said the constable. “We 
know Heddick is here, and, according to the young 
people, his mate must be here, too. He’s had no 
means of getting off the island these last few days, 
for it is too far to the mainland for him to swim, 
no matter how good a swimmer he is.” 

“And he is a mighty good swimmer, too,” mut¬ 
tered Bob. 

“When I was over here with my men the other 
day,” continued Pomfret reflectively, “we were 
unable to find any hide-out where Nick Olmer 
might have laid up. But I know a fisherman who 
has spent much time on this island, and he knows 
every cranny and crevice in it. We’ll get him to 
comb the rocks.” 

“Meanwhile?” asked Mr. Gordon. 

“Oh, meanwhile we will take away Heddick’s 
boat and keep watch on the island so that the 
fellows cannot get away. I am interested in them 
now, Mr. Gordon. Whether they were mixed up 
in that bank robbery or not, they have done 
enough, especially Jasper Heddick, to warrant my 
apprehending them on sight.” 

“I hope Uncle Phin gets satisfaction for their 


TRAILING JASPER HEDDICK 185 

stealing of his auto,” said Sally, as they went back 
to the edge of the water. “The bank’s made up 
the money loss to Corwin and pop, so that’s all 
right.” 

Betty and Bob, however, were much disap¬ 
pointed. They had hoped that the two ex-aviators 
would be immediately arrested and the mysterious 
business brought to a close. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


AT THE SUMMIT OF PIKERS PEAK 

It was the following afternoon, and after their 
usual sojourn at the bathing beach, that Bob 
Henderson came down from his room arrayed 
for the boardwalk, but with a peacock’s “eye” 
stuck in the band of his hat, wearing knicker¬ 
bockers, and with his field glasses hung across his 
shoulder by a strap. 

“Behold!” exclaimed Bobby, striking an atti¬ 
tude in front of the boy before he reached the 
bottom step. “Behold! you are all rigged out 
like a mountain climber, Robert. What do you 
represent—an Alpine guide? Do you yodel? 
You look as if you might be a yodeler.” 

“Goodness! I never thought he was as bad as 
all that,” giggled Tommy Tucker. “Can’t you get 
arrested for being that?” 

“For being a yodeler?” repeated Bobby gravely. 
“Undoubtedly. If you yodel badly enough. And 
Bob looks bad-” 

“Now, folks,” interrupted Betty, laughing, 

18 6 



AT THE SUMMIT OF PIKE’S PEAK jgy 

“you let Bob alone. I can see in his eye that he is 
about to suggest something to stir up the clan. 
What is it, Bob?” 

“Miss Roberta Littell is quite right,” Bob said 
seriously. “I am going mountain climbing. And 
if any, or all of you, want to come along, I am 
prepared to pay the shot, as they say in the old- 
time sea stories. Uncle Dick just gave me my 
month’s stipend—is that right, Libbie? Is it a 
good word?” 

“It is a good word, Bob, if you are willing to 
spend some of your pin money on us. Every cent 
I brought with me is gone.” 

“Money burns a hole in your pocket,” said 
Louise to her cousin with some severity. “Every 
time you pass a candy shop you see something you 
want to eat.” 

“Never mind, Libbie,” said Bob. “You are in 
on this. You shall go mountain climbing at my 
expense.” 

But this suggestion did not quite meet with the 
plump girl’s approval after all. 

“Why is it that you all can think of nothing but 
hard work?” she asked. “Mountain climbing is 
not to my fancy. Oh, no!” 

“Libbie I” exclaimed Timothy Derby suddenly, 
“I know what Bob is up to. I haven’t any money, 
either; but if he wants to pay for our tickets I for 
one will attend him to the mountain’s peak.” 


188 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“Ah l” cried Betty. “I see. Tike’s Peak’ is 
the summit you mean to climb. Come on, Bob! 
That is the very nicest ride there is on the board¬ 
walk. I’m ready.” 

The Pike’s Peak ride was one of the more ex¬ 
pensive entertainments along the Ocean Park 
boardwalk. 

“But there is nothing small about Bob when it 
comes to standing treat,” declared Teddy. “Lib- 
bie cannot complain of the exertion which this 
climb demands.” 

“Your hiking is all done for you, Miss Lazy¬ 
bones,” was Bobby’s comment for Libbie’s par¬ 
ticular ear. 

“That is quite as it should be,” granted the 
plump girl. “And it really is romantic—the most 
romantic thing along the whole boardwalk.” 

“Don’t feel so romantic that you fall off when 
we get to the peak,” warned Bobby, but laughing. 
“You are the greatest girl!” 

“Oh, no!” chuckled Tommy Tucker. “Not the 
greatest, Bobby. Think of Sally’s friend, the fat 
lady.” 

“Aren’t you a horrid boy!” giggled the romantic 
girl’s cousin. 

Bob and Betty led the way from the bungalow 
to the boardwalk. When the Marigold Bungalow 
crowd turned out en masse they were bound to be 
noticed. By this time Betty and her friends were 


AT THE SUMMIT OF PIKE’S PEAK 189 

well known in Ocean Park to many of the summer 
visitors, as well as to the “natives” and conces¬ 
sionaires. 

During the past few days they had become well 
acquainted with Florianne, too. And now when 
Betty saw the dancer on the veranda of the Cam- 
peachie, she broke away from Bob with an apology 
and ran to speak to the woman who had so suc¬ 
cessfully staged the charity entertainment the 
night before. 

“You girls from Marigold Bungalow did splen¬ 
didly,” the professional dancer said to Betty, 
smiling. “Even Johnny says that and, for a young 
man, he is the biggest old grouch I know,” and 
she laughed. 

Betty had a question she wished to ask Florianne 
and she put it at once: 

“Madam Florianne, what sort of cave did you 
find over there on Rocky Island the other day 
when you and your nephew were there?” 

“What sort of cave? Why, just a regular 
cave,” and the woman laughed again. “It had a 
roof, and sides, and nice white sand on the floor, 
and—and—yes! there was a passage leading out 
at the back. I don’t know how deep the passage 
was, for we did not venture into it.” 

“It is funny we could not find any such cave,” 
murmured Betty thoughtfully, quite puzzled. “At 
least, we didn’t find it-” 



BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


19O 

She was going to say “last night,” but she 
thought in time and did not say it. Florianne 
seemed much amused. 

“If you looked for it at high tide I guess you 
would not see the opening,” the dancer said. “I 
think the sea comes in and almost covers the 
opening at high tide.” 

“Oh! Maybe that is it, Madam Florianne,” 
cried Betty. “I’m glad you told me that. The 
next time we go to the island I’ll remember that.” 

She ran away to join her friends on their way 
to the Pike’s Peak ride. What Florianne had said 
about the cave gave Betty Gordon an idea that 
she intended to discuss with Uncle Dick. Just now, 
however, the party from Marigold Bungalow had 
something on their minds besides the disappear¬ 
ance of the ex-aviators. 

The fun of the ride began right at the edge of 
the boardwalk. There was a troop of burros, and 
each of the merry dozen bestrode one of the funny 
little animals for the first part of the entertain¬ 
ment. 

In single file, Betty and Bob in the lead, they 
entered a “canyon,” the walls of which were of 
painted canvas. But it really looked like the 
real thing. They wound in and about for some 
minutes, and then came out at what looked like a 
log hut with a rough sign over the door which 
read: “Pike’s Peak Hotel.” 


AT THE SUMMIT OF PIKE’S PEAK 


I 9 I 

Here the party exchanged the burros’ saddles 
for seats in two cars shaped a good deal like the 
boats belonging to the other rides and to the 
chutes. A man sat at a wheel in the front of 
each car and managed the brakes. 

The machinery started, and the two cars shot 
up an incline, through another painted passage, 
and so out on the elevated framework which 
towered so high that they could see all over Ocean 
Park and away out to sea as well. 

Up they went, and then dashed down an incline 
so rapidly that the rushing air almost stopped their 
breath. There was a thrill to this ride that always 
delighted Betty. She clung to Bob’s arm and to 
the rail on her other side, and blinked her eyes 
rapidly. 

Up another hill the car shot and this time came 
out upon the highest curve of the ride. The boys 
shouted their delight, and the girls shrilled a 
school song as the cars tore up the track. 

“Great, Betty?” was Bob’s comment, looking 
sideways at her. 

“Glorious!” the girl rejoined. 

Just then the cars stopped. The halt was so 
abrupt that, had they not all been clinging tightly, 
they might have been flung from their seats. 

“Goodness me! what’s happened?” shrieked 
Alice Guerin. 


192 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


“This isn’t on the program,” declared her sister, 
“I am sure. Has it broken down?” 

The machinery certainly had stopped. The men 
managing the cars endeavored to start them, but 
could not. There they were, stuck on the very 
peak of the elevated structure. 

“Well, we’re not hurt any,” said Louise plac¬ 
idly. “I guess we’ll get down all right.” 

“See!” cried Bobby, excitedly. “There is 
Rocky Island, just as plain as can be. And look 
at all the boats out there.” 

“Let me have your glasses, Bob,” Betty begged. 
“What a view one has from this place!” 

She accepted the glasses and put them to her 
eyes. The next moment she started and uttered 
an exclamation of surprise. 

“What do you see?” asked Bob curiously. 
^You’re looking at the island, Betty.” 

“Sh!” exclaimed the girl. “I just saw two 
figures. There they are again! They are two 
men, Bob. These are splendid glasses of yours.” 

“Sure, they are,” agreed Bob proudly. 

“I can see those men very clearly. I—believe 
—they—are— Oh, Bob,” gasped Betty earnestly, 
“I am almost sure they are Jasp Heddick and 
Nick Olmer! They are still on that island, even 
if the police haven’t found them.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


IN THE CAVERN 

The cars on the aerial railroad were not halted 
for long. Betty said nothing to anybody then save 
to Bob Henderson about the two figures on the 
island which she had seen so clearly from the 
summit of Pike’s Peak. But when the party re¬ 
turned to the bungalow she told Mr. Gordon. 

“No more hunting about that place at night,” 
he said, shaking his head. “I will tell Pomfret 
in the morning. His men have been watching the 
island to-day, I believe, but they couldn’t see all 
the island, as you could, for they are at the level 
of the water.” 

“And Madam Florianne says there is a cave 
there that can be entered only at low tide,” the 
girl said eagerly. “I do think Rocky Island is the 
most mysterious place!” 

“It seems to be,” her guardian agreed. 

Betty had to tell Bobby and the other girls 
at bedtime about what she thought she had seen 
through the glasses, and there was such a buzz of 
193 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


194 

conversation in their rooms that the boys knocked 
on the partitions and wanted to know the reason 
[for all the excitement. Of course, Bob Hender¬ 
son knew, but he had kept silent about it. 

“If there is going to be another chase after 
those fellows, I want to see it,” Bobby declared. 

“Let’s all go!” exclaimed Norma Guerin. “I 
am as excited as I can be!” 

It was agreed that the canoe club must be afloat 
early the next morning. In fact, the twelve got 
away from the bungalow and down to the boat 
landing at the cove before Constable Pomfret 
came to hear Mr. Gordon’s report. Betty’s guar¬ 
dian appeared at the cove with the police, but 
he was very decided in his warning to the young 
people not to land upon the island until the offi¬ 
cers were first ashore. 

“I saw smoke over there early,” said Horace 
Jones, the boatkeeper. “I imagine those fellows 
are there yet.” 

The fisherman Mr. Pomfret had spoken of was 
with the party. He agreed that there were cav¬ 
erns in the island the entrances to which were 
hidden at high tide. It was now low water, and 
the big motor-boat, filled with officers, made 
directly for the island. 

“We want to be in at the finish,” Bobby said 
excitedly to Betty and the others. “Oh! I do 


IN THE CAVERN 


195 

hope they catch those two men. I’m just as ex¬ 
cited as Norma.” 

After Mr. Pomfret and the other men had 
landed the canoeists got ashore in a hurry. They 
swarmed up oyer the rocks and followed the 
police, who searched every crevice along the 
water’s edge on both shores of the island. 

But remembering Mr. Gordon’s stern instruc¬ 
tions, the young people kept some distance in the 
rear. The weed-covered ledges and bowlders 
along the brink of the sea interested Betty and 
her friends more than did the higher part of the 
island. They peeped and peered in every cranny 
and cavity. There were several caverns with 
sanded floors, which might have been that in 
which the two dancers had practiced their new 
steps; but Betty could find no rear passage lead¬ 
ing out of any of these caves. 

Naturally the boys and girls became tired of 
the search after a time. Even Mr. Pomfret and 
his men seemed to have given up hope of finding 
Heddick and Olmer. The police gathered with 
Mr. Gordon and the fisherman at the landing 
where the motor-boat and canoes were moored, 
to talk the matter over. 

“Got a bite!” exclaimed Teddy Tucker, who 
was an indefatigable fisherman and never went 
out in his canoe without tackle and bait. “Say, 
this is good! A blackfish—a tautaug. Come on, 


196 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

Bob! Let’s catch a mess to take home to the 
cook. She’ll say we are regular fellows.” 

The other boys as well as Bob, ran for their 
tackle and bait cans. Timothy and Libbie, how¬ 
ever, slipped away. Betty heard the poetical 
youth say to the girl: 

“I know it all, now, Elizabeth. ‘The Cavalier 
Rides By’ is the loveliest piece in the whole book.” 

“Oh, Timothy!” murmured Libbie, “I think 
you are just wonderful.” 

Betty thought Uncle Dick did not mean for 
the young people to separate, so she kept watch 
on Timothy and Libbie. When Bobby demanded 
to know the whereabouts of the poetical pair, 
Betty pointed out the particular cavern into which 
they had disappeared. 

“Poetry, as usual?” exclaimed Bobby. 

“I fancy so. ‘The Cavalier Rides By.’ I heard 
Timothy say he knew it perfectly, and he has 
gone to recite it to poor Libbie.” 

“Poor Libbie! Bah!” exclaimed Bobby. “She 
encourages him. And there are twenty-eight 
verses in that thing. It is as long as ‘The Cow¬ 
boy’s Lament,’ and they say that every puncher 
that sings that adds a new verse. 

“Come on!” added Bobby wickedly. “Let’s 
give them a shock!” 

She gathered the other three together in a 
minute. None of them cared much for fishing. 


IN THE CAVERN 


197 

Alice said that it was “nasty and smelly,” anyway. 
Bobby’s plan for startling the poetic couple was 
more fun. 

The five girls crept down over the slippery 
rocks to a point from which they could look into 
the cave through a crevice. When the sea was 
up, the entrance to the cavern was hidden; but 
this crack in the roof gave a view of the sanded 
floor clear to the back of the hollow. 

Striding back and forth upon the smooth sand 
was Timothy, his hat off, his hair shaken back 
from his flushed face, and he was mouthing the 
lines of the poem in grand style. Alice began to 
giggle, but Bobby hushed her with a look. 

“All ready, now! We’ll shout together down 
the crack and scare ’em out of their poetic frenzy. 
Ready?” 

Suddenly Betty clutched her arm. She was 
staring wildly into the cavern below them, but not 
at their friends. A round bowlder at the extreme 
rear of the cave, but which Betty could plainly 
see, had moved! It turned as though it were on 
a pivot. An aperture became visible beside it, 
and in that opening Betty Gordon saw the head 
of a man who was staring into the cavern. 

“What’s the matter, Betty?” whispered her 
chum. 

“Oh! Bobby! Jasp-” 

“What is the matter with you?” again de- 



198 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

manded her friend, and with increasing excite¬ 
ment. 

Betty sprang to her feet at last with a shout 
of alarm. The two below were frightened enough, 
but Betty’s immediate companions were even more 
amazed by her actions. She whirled about and 
started over the rocks at a desperate run toward 
Mr. Gordon and the policemen. After that first 
scream, however, she reserved her breath so as 
to tell Uncle Dick what she had seen in the 


cavern. 


CHAPTER XXV 


AN END TO ALL THINGS 

Betty’s wild shout succeeded in frightening 
Libbie and Timothy quite as successfully as 
Bobby Littell could have wished. They came 
scuttling out of the cave with much despatch. 
But they had no idea, any more than had the 
other girls, what had “started Betty off!” 

“Suppose she’s gone crazy?” asked Norma. 
“She looked wild.” 

“I left my book down there, she startled me 
so,” gasped Timothy. 

“Don’t go down again! Don’t go down there, 
Timothy!” commanded Libbie. “Betty was look¬ 
ing into the cave when she screamed, so Bobby 
says. She saw something!” 

“And it wouldn’t have been you spouting 
poetry, Tim,” added Bobby, the irrepressible. 
“She’s used to that, so it couldn’t have scared 
her.” 

Now they saw Mr. Gordon and Constable 
Pomfret and the other men coming hurriedly over 

199 


200 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


the rocks. Betty was leading the way, gesticu¬ 
lating excitedly. Bob and the other boys dropped 
their lishlines hurriedly and started after the 
crowd. 

“Oh, my dears!” murmured Norma, “it is those 
awful aviators! Betty-” 

Betty approached as fast as she could, her 
finger on her lips in warning. 

“Hush!” she whispered, when she was near 
enough to her girl friends and Timothy Derby 
for them to hear. “Those awful men are hiding 
in that cave!” 

Libbie and Timothy could scarcely believe this 
to be true, for they had seen no sign of the men’s 
presence. But it was so. Dividing his party into 
groups to beat the surrounding rocks, Mr. Pom- 
fret went down into the cavern himself, with 
Mr. Gordon and the fisherman, and they finally 
routed Jasper Heddick and Nick Olmer out of a 
passage that the two fellows had blocked with a 
movable stone. 

They were hauled out into the open, and with 
them came the black bag the young people had 
seen dropped from the seaplane. That bag, as 
all had suspected, contained the loot of the Ocean 
Park bank. 

Whether Heddick and Olmer had quarreled or 
not, they had evidently made up again and had 
planned to get away from Rocky Island with the 



AN END TO ALL THINGS 


201 


stolen money at the first opportunity. But, in¬ 
stead, they were taken to jail with every prospect 
of a long term in prison ahead of them. They 
never knew how much their capture and punish¬ 
ment was due to Betty Gordon and her friends 
and to Sally Cutler. But it was a fact that the 
young people’s continued interest in the two men 
had kept the case alive when the police had about 
given the mystery up as inexplicable. 

Meanwhile the Marigold Bungalow crowd con¬ 
tinued to have the liveliest times of any vacation 
group in all of Ocean Park. The canoe club held 
races in the cove, to which all other canoeists in 
the vicinity were invited. On the bathing beach 
they got up handball, tug-o’-war, and basketball 
contests, as well as the usual swimming races. 
The concessions along the boardwalk were, of 
course, a continual source of amusement to all 
of the young folks. 

“Wish we could take all these things back to 
Shadyside with us,” Bobby Littell said on one 
occasion. “Think of a carrousel like this one 
right in front of the gym building.” 

Bobby was as fond as a small boy of riding the 
wooden horses. One might think that she had 
never been in a saddle on a real horse in all her 
life! 

“I lo-o-ove those dreamy tunnel rides,” said 
Libbie. “And that Pike’s Peak ride where we got 


202 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


stuck. It seems as if you were going on a long 
journey, and were never going to get there.” 

“What an idea!” was the practical Louise’s 
comment. 

“Yes,” breathed Libbie ecstatically. “And 
then you shoot out into daylight and your heart 
jumps right up into your mouth-” 

“And that’s sure enough a mouthful!” ex¬ 
claimed Bobby, laughing. 

“I’ve bought all the souvenirs along the board¬ 
walk that my trunk will hold,” observed Norma. 
“No room for my clothes. Guess I’ll have to 
carry every one of my dresses over my arm when 
we go away.” 

In all their good times Betty did not forget 
Sally Cutler. She not only was amused by the 
peculiarities of the girl at the dog circus, but she 
appreciated Sally’s good qualities. On one occa¬ 
sion Betty said to the ticket-selling girl: 

“You know, Sally, this selling tickets at a dog 
show and associating with people like those 
freaks, isn’t just the best thing for you. My uncle 
says it isn’t. You haven’t any mother, and your 
father doesn’t consider everything. But if your 
mother was alive I am sure she would not 
approve.” 

“I reckon you’re right, Betty Gordon,” said 
Sally. “Pop was saying so himself when he was 
down on Sunday.” 



AN END TO ALL THINGS 


203 


“I am glad he sees it too.” 

“And the show has done so well he thinks I’d 
better come home. The Corwins are pretty hon¬ 
est. They can get a man to sell tickets. But Ben 
Michaels is an awfully nice boy; don’t you think 
so, Betty?” 

Betty told her she did think so—for about the 
one hundredth time!—and she was really glad 
that the tattooed boy was going to leave the freak 
show too. He said his mother would not have to 
be a bearded lady any more, either; and it would 
be possible for Ben to spend the next few years 
in school. 

“I suppose, Miss Fixit,” Bobby Littell said to 
Betty one evening, as they were preparing for 
bed, “that there is not a solitary living thing here 
at Ocean Park that needs your attention now? 
Everything is running smoothly?” 

Betty pinched her. “Do you think I am always 
interfering with other peoples’ affairs?” she de¬ 
manded of her chum. 

“Not in the least. You are forever and ever 
smoothing other people’s paths and making 
twisted things come straight—Ouch!” 

“Maybe I could comb the twists out of your 
hair, Bobby,” suggested Betty demurely. 

“Oh! I don’t see how it gets snarled up so,” 
sighed Bobby. “Yours doesn’t, Betty.” 

Betty smiled at herself in the glass. “I won- 


2°4 


BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 


der,” she said, “if other people besides you, 
Bobby, think that I interfere too much.” 

“Huh? Nonsense! Who said I thought so?” 
demanded Bobby. 

“Well, you hinted-” 

“Oh! There! I got out a regular bird’s nest 
that time. Why, Betty Gordon!” added her 
friend, “I never meant to criticize you—not 
really. You do have a way of helping people out 
of difficulties, and making plain all the crooked 
things. Dear me! I don’t wonder that Mr. 
Gordon admires you so and that even Miss Ander¬ 
son says you are quite wonderful.” 

“ ‘Wonderful’ ? Did she say that?” 

“Exactly. Wonderful was the word she used.” 
Then Bobby began to giggle. “She said you are 
the most wonderful girl for getting into scrapes 
and out again that she ever knew—you even beat 
me in that line.” 

Betty laughed at this. “I am not sure that I 
feel complimented after all,” she said. “You 
have always held the palm. And you should, too, 
you are the oldest.” 

“Don’t remind me of my age,” sighed Bobby. 
“We are getting to be regular Mrs. Methuselahs, 
Betty. Our second year at Shadyside will begin 
next fall. And mother wrote me in June that 
Aunt Hannah had written saying that when I 



AN END TO ALL THINGS 


205 

come out I should have her necklace and brace¬ 
lets. My! I feci grown up already.” 

“When you come out!” repeated Betty scorn¬ 
fully. “My dear girl, there is a lot of water to 
run by the mill before you are even a ‘sub-deb.’ 
Come out, indeed!” 

“Why, it is easy enough to imagine that,” de¬ 
clared Bobby, her eyes shining. “And I can 
imagine even farther. I can see myself grown¬ 
up—quite. And being engaged. And even get¬ 
ting married—Oh! the gown I’ll have, and the 
orange blossoms, and the great bouquet, and the 
pointed satin slippers-” 

“And the corns the slippers will give you. 
Humph!” exclaimed Betty. “You talk as ab¬ 
surdly as Libbie. To think of being married at 
your age!” 

“Oh, no. Not at my present age,” giggled 
Bobby, hopping into bed. “And I haven’t yet 
picked out the person I am going to marry. Have 
you, Betty?” 

“What nonsense!” ejaculated Betty Gordon. 
“Go to sleep, will you?” and she nestled her own 
head into the pillow. 

“I’ll see if I can dream about him,” yawned 
Bobby. “The coming prince—Ow! Goodnight, 
Betty. See if you can dream about your prince, 
too.” 

“Ridiculous!” ejaculated Betty. 



206 BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

But when she shut her eyes all she could see— 
and it was the last waking vision she had—was 
the merry face of Bob Henderson. She blinked 
twice, trying to clear her sleepy eyes of this reflec¬ 
tion. But when she closed the lids again back 
came Bob’s face. 

“Just as clear, as clear,” sighed Betty Gordon. 
“Is Bob-” 

At this point her reflections ceased, for Betty 
was fast asleep. 


THE END 



THE BETTY GORDON SERIES 


By ALICE B. EMERSON 

Author of the Famous “Ruth Fielding” Series 

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors 

Price per volume, 65 cents , postpaid 


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are bound to make this writer more popular 
than ever with her host of girl readers. 

1. BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE 
FARM 

or The Mystery of a Nobody 
At the age of twelve Betty is left an orphan. 
Her uncle sends her to live on a farm. 


2. BETTY GORDON BN WASHINGTON 

or Strange Adventures in a Great City 
In this volume Betty goes to the National Capitol to find her 
uncle and has several unusual adventures. 

3. BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL 

or The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune 
From Washington the scene is shifted to the great oil fields of 
our country. A splendid picture of the oil field operations of today. 

4. BETTY GORDON AT BOARDING SCHOOL 

or The Treasure of Indian Chasm 

Seeking the treasure of Indian Chasm makes an exceedingly inter¬ 
esting incident. 

5. BETTY GORDON AT MOUNTAIN CAMP 

or The Mystery of Ida Bellethorne 

At Mountain Camp Betty found herself in the midst of a mystery 
involving a girl whom she had previously met in Washington. 

6. BETTY GORDON AT OCEAN PARK 

or Gay Days on the Boardwalk 
Adventure in high society let loose on the seashore. 

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Ruth Fielding will live in juvenile Fiction. 

RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL 

or Jasper Parloe's Secret 

RUTH FIELDING ATBRIARWOOD HALL 

or Solving the Campus Mystery 

RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP 

or Lost in the Backwoods 

RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE 
POINT or Nita, the Oirl Castaway 
RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH 
or Schoolgirls Among the Cowboys 
RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND 
or The Old Hunter's Treasure Box 
RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM 
or What Became of the Raby Orphans 
RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES 
or The Missing Pearl Necklace 
RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES 
or Helping the Dormitory Fund 
RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE 
or Great Days in the Land of Cotton 
RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE 

or The Missing Examination Papers 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE 
or College Girls in the Land of Gold 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS 
or Doing Her Bit for Uncle Sam 
RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT 
or The Hunt for a Lost Soldier 
RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND 
or A Red Cross Worker’s Ocean Perils 
RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST 

or The Hermit of Beach Plum Point 
RUTH FIELDING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST 
or The Indian Girl Star of the Movies 
RUTH FIELDING ON THE ST. LAWRENCE 
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RUTH FIELDING TREASURE HUNTING 
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The highest ideals of girlhood as advocated 
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unobtrusive there is a message in every volume . 

1. THE GIRL SCOUT PIONEERS 

or Winning the First B. C. 

A story of the True Tred Troop in a Penn¬ 
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want to see the city, are reclaimed through 
troop influence. The story is correct in scout 
detail. 

2. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT BELLAIRE 

or Maid Mary's Awakening 

The story of a timid little maid who is afraid to take part in 
other girls’ activities, while working nobly alone for high ideals. 
How she was discovered by the Bellaire Troop and came into her 
own as “Maid Mary” makes a fascinating story. 

3. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT SEA CREST 

or The Wig Wag Rescue 

Luna Land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious 
seclusion, and Kitty Scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in keeping 
all others at bay until the Girl Scouts come. 

4. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT CAMP COMALONG 

or Peg of Tamarack Hills 

The girls of Bobolink Troop spend their summer on the shores of 
Lake Hocomo. Their discovery of Peg, the mysterious rider, and 
the clearing up of her remarkable adventures afford a vigorous plot. 

5. THE GIRL SCOUTS AT ROCKY LEDGE 

or Nora's Real Vacation 

Nora Blair is the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her 
dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to 
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12 mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors 

Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid 


A new and up-to-date series , taking in the 
activities of several bright girls who become 
interested in radio. The stories tell of thrilling 
exploits , out-door life and the great part the 
Radio plays in the adventures of the girls and 
in solving their mysteries. Fascinating books 
that girls of all ages will want to read. 


V THE RADIO GIRLS OF ROSELAWN 

or A Strange Message from the Air 
Showing how Jessie Norwood and her chums became interested 
in radiophoning, how they gave a concert for a worthy local charity, 
and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out 
of the air. A girl who was wanted as a witness in a celebrated law 
case had disappeared, and how the radio girls went to the rescue is 
told in an absorbing manner. 

2. THE RADIO GIRLS ON THE PROGRAM 

or Singing and Reciting at the Sending Station 
When listening in on a thrilling recitation or a superb concert 
number who of us has not longed to “look behind the scenes” to see 
how it was done? The girls had made the acquaintance of a sending 
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3. THE RADIO GIRLS ON STATION ISLAND 

or The Wireless from the Steam Yacht 
In this volume the girls travel to the seashore and put in a vacation 
on an island where is located a big radio sending station. The big 
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been asked to get out a similar series for 
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these tales than Mrs. Penrose, who, besides 
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mob i list. 

The Motor Girls 

or A Mystery of the Road 


The Motor Girls on a Tour 

or Keeping m Strange Promise 


The motor Girls at lookout Beach 

or In Quest of the Runaways 

The Motor Girls Through New England 

or Held by the Gypsies 

The motor Girls on Cedar Lake 

or The Hermit of Fern Island 

The Motor girls on the Coast 

or The Waif from the Sea 

The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay 

or The Secret of the Red Oar 

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Dorothy Dale: a Girl of To-day 
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NEW YORK 











* 





• 4 









































































